Silent Hill V: The Unknown Soldier
by ClayPidgeon162
Summary: Not a novelization of the game, but a rewrite. Alex Shepherd returns home after getting a medical discharge from the Army, intent on bringing closure to the life he left behind years ago. But he finds Shepherd's Glen is not the quiet town he remembers.
1. The Unknown Soldier

**S**I**L**E**N**T HI**L**L **V**

**The Unknown Soldier**

_Author's Note: This is not a novelization of the game, but rather a rewrite of the story. While it keeps some of the characters and elements of the game, it's overall a different story and doesn't contain any significant spoilers. Even the characters themselves are different to some degree. My idea was to take parts of the game's plot and turn it into a more personal story, much like Silent Hill 2, that focuses purely on Alex and has nothing to do with the Order, and certainly nothing to do with the movie. I imagine most people reading this have played the game, so I'll clarify one point about my story for anyone expecting a certain "twist": Alex is a real Veteran. It's not make believe, it's not all in his mind, he actually went into the Army and went off to war. Anyway, hope you enjoy the story.

* * *

_

"_Here Rests In Honored Glory An American Soldier Known But To God"_ - Tomb of the Unknowns, Arlington National Cemetery

* * *

I can barely remember a time when my father wasn't disappointed with me. Those are forgotten days, when I was still his good little soldier. Sometimes those faint pictures just seem like a dream that got lost in the real memories. But I don't even know what real is anymore.

I tried to be his good little soldier. But war changes you. They say war is Hell, but the silence is much worse. Nobody back home could ever understand. They never understood me.

They say you can't go home again, but they're wrong. I just never wanted to.

— — — — —

The rusty squeals of metal gears and loud clanks of ancient machinery stirred his eyes awake, but all he found was an empty black void around him. The only sign that his eyes were even open were the brief explosions of blinding light that showered across the coarse layers of rust dissolving the walls around him. Alex didn't question where he was or how he got there. It almost seemed to him that this perverse reality was all that existed and everything else had just been a dream.

He found himself strapped into the center of a slender metal cage, just large enough to hold his body. There were no bars on this cage, just the worn metal frame. But he couldn't escape if he wanted to. His back was bound to a slab of metal and each of his limbs were strapped to a separate bar, forcing his body to stand stiffly at the position of attention.

Alex found himself upright, floating above the metal grating of the floor like a rigid exclamation point. The cage was attached to a series of tracks in the ceiling, which carried him loudly through the hallway with clanking, clashes of metal gears.

He twisted his head and tried to look at his surroundings, but each flash of light branded a hazy white blotch across his eyes. He was only given a split second to feed upon the images around him before that light sunk back into the black depths. The world around him was in the midst of decay. The only thing that remained were the metal frames of what once was, but even that was being gradually consumed by a ravenous plague of brown rust.

It looked as though he was traveling through the remnants of a hallway. But in front of each room, where there should've been a door, instead stood a large sheet of glass. A dim red bulb dangled in each of these rooms, casting vague silhouettes of what was held inside. He saw a man clothed in nothing but pale blotchy flesh, his arms sewn to his chest in the pattern of a straight jacket. The man's lips were stitched together, and he pressed his face against the glass until his blood began to seep through the stitching that sealed his eyes shut.

The next room contained a figure whose head was shrouded in the pit of a sand bag and his arms apparently tied behind his back. The head shook and trembled in impossible movements as it crashed against the glass pane, burrowing a web of cracks through its surface.

This world made more sense to Alex than the one he thought he knew. The grotesque, irrational sights. The overpowering stench of death. The queasy shivering of his flesh. The overbearing, busy noise swarming through his ears. Silence would've driven him insane. This was real. This was the only thing he understood anymore.

As he passed by the next room, he saw something that stuck to his eyes and refused to let go. A small boy stood behind the glass, completely motionless except for his wandering eyes, which followed Alex's as he was carried down the hallway. At the bottom of the glass was the word "MISSING" etched in crude letters.

The sight was sobering to Alex and he suddenly awoke from his passive daze, desperately trying to hold onto the boy with his eyes. But the boy was slowly slipping from his grasp and Alex called out, "Josh? _Josh!"_ But the child vanished from his sight and settled into his thoughts as an unsure memory as Alex continued to cry his name.

His arms came to life and struggled against his restraints, but he found with a sharp pain digging deeply into his skin that his wrists were bound by strands of razor wire. The more he fought, the tighter they gripped. He started screaming at the unknown forces carrying him down that hall, "What the fuck is this? Where's my fire team?"

His cage started to climb at an upwards slope as it left the hallway and wandered with uneasy swings into an immense, open room. The echoes of a hundred voices pounced upon Alex's ears, muffling his own screams, "_Where the hell am I? Where're my men?"_

Some of the voices that penetrated his ears rode upon incoherent wails of agony. Some sobbed meekly with sorrow. And others roared with manic insanity.

The steady, brooding red light couldn't reach the furthest crevice of that massive room. Flashes of flickering, pale yellow bulbs tried futilely to unveil this place to Alex's eyes. His cage reached the ceiling and continued on a steady, flat course as it swung wildly back and forth, giving his eyes a clear view of what rested beneath him.

In the center of the floor was a gapping mouth filled with screeching metal teeth and revolving gears soaked in blood and wilting flesh. Its only purpose seemed to be to grind down the flesh and bone of those hollering voices that bounced between the walls.

The cage started on a descent as it headed for the furthest end of the room, lowering Alex towards an empty gurney flanked by faded white hospital curtains. As the cage released from the track and dropped onto the gurney, Alex could hear the man next to him screaming wildly, "_They took everything! There're no pieces left!"_

Alex turned his head towards the man, his voice familiar, and found a crack in the curtain separating them that gave him a vague view of the man's head. His body was hidden behind the curtain, only an obscure shadow of it cast upon that tainted white surface. The man shared his horror and agony with Alex through his crazed screams, and Alex pleaded for him to stop.

But the man recognized his voice and screamed, "_Shepherd! Don't leave me!"_

A face suddenly burrowed into Alex's thoughts and he called out to the man, "Joey? Is that you?"

"_There's nothing left! There's nothing for them to take!"_

"Joey? What the fuck is going on?"

The man raised his head and aimed it towards Alex, lifting it into a slither of flickering yellow light for Alex to look upon him in horror. Alex's lips muttered in incoherent words, "Oh God." There was barely a face left on the man for Alex's eyes. There was only a crusted red outline of where his nose belonged, his scalp was bare to the bone, and his eyes were no more than dark, endless holes into a black abyss.

His bruised and chapped lips screamed at Alex, "_They're harvesting us!"_

Alex's eyes were pulled away when two figures slumped towards him. He saw the distinct outlines of two nurses and immediately pleaded for compassion, "Please – what's going on? What is this place?"

But as they lurched further into his view, he saw their grotesquely blurred expressions, looking as though a fungus of flesh had crusted over their faces like lumps of paper-mache. Their appearance almost seemed to try to distract him with uniforms that were revealingly short and exposed bodies moving in twitching, almost suggestive motions. But Alex only found them more disgusting as they moved closer to him.

The metal bar holding his left arm suddenly swung outwards and held the arm at a right-angle to the rest of his body. Alex quickly looked over to Joey, hoping he could somehow save him, but found another nurse pushing Joey's gurney towards the hole in the center of the room.

Joey screamed and pleaded, his body writhing and kicking as they pushed him towards the mouth of that ravenous machine. Alex could see the shadows of his body swinging across the curtain separating them, and he could see clearly the amputated stumps where Joey's arms and legs were supposed to be.

Alex's eyes swung back towards the nurses flanking him when he felt something cold and rigid settle upon his skin. One of the nurses was holding a rusty saw in her twitching hand, propping the wickedly grooved blade against his left arm. Alex struggled to free himself from the restraints as he screamed at them, _"No! It's mine, you can't fuckin' have it!"_ As the teeth of the saw began to chew through his flesh, his agony was muffled by the rumbling, purring hunger of that machine in the center of the room.

Alex opened his eyes. The purrs of the engine rumbled through the cab of the truck as the driver shifted gears. He found himself hunched forward in the passenger's seat, his mouth still open from the gasp it had spit out into the silent cab. Alex looked over to the driver awkwardly, but the man kept his eyes on the road, giving Alex the courtesy of ignoring his obvious wake from a nightmare.

The truck driver was almost a living stereotype with flannel sleeves reaching out from under his vest jacket. He tried to hide the ravaging wrinkles of his face under the shadow of a ball cap and a thick red beard.

The driver reached over and turned on the radio to drown out the silent embarrassment coming from Alex's disturbed expression. The music struggled to escape the speakers as it found bars of static blocking its path. Alex leaned back in the passenger's seat and tried to relax as he let his gaze drift outside the windows.

The moonlight was stripped down to a pale gray hue by clouds of mist that drifted from the trees lining the road. Must be from Toluca Lake, he thought. There were a lot of memories beneath those waters. He was close.

Alex drifted into thoughts of how long it'd been since he saw that town. He imagined it looking exactly the same as the night he left, when he thought he'd never be coming back. But everyone's gotta come back eventually, he reasoned.

Alex lifted up the sleeve of his right arm so his eyes could look upon the broken watch gripped around his wrist. It had a brown leather band and gold trim with stiff analog hands trapped in a moment of the past. When he looked back up to the road, he saw the sign ahead in the headlights of the truck. He spoke to the driver, "You can drop me off at the sign."

As the driver geared down the semi and lightly pressed down on the brakes, he asked, "Sure? I can take you up to the town."

"No, I kinda feel like walking." The truck came to a stop just before the sign and Alex opened the passenger's side door as he looked back to the trucker. The man offered his hand and the words, "Welcome home soldier."

Alex shook the driver's hand and smiled faintly as he replied, "Thanks." He grabbed a faded, olive green military duffel from behind the seat and slung it over his right shoulder as he stepped out of the cab.

The engine grunted as the truck pulled away and faded into the fog until it vanished completely. Alex stood alone on the side of the road, staring up at the crooked wooden sign reading,

* * *

Welcome To  
**SHEPHERD'S GLEN  
**_Where Family Comes First_

* * *


	2. Homecoming

— **Homecoming** —

* * *

My family was one of the founders of Shepherd's Glen and had the honor of the town being named after them. Mom used to say that there was always a home for us there because it had our name on it. But that changed when I left.

When the Army realized they couldn't get anything more from me, they gave me my final orders and told me to go home. I'd almost forgotten there was a place outside the barracks I used to call home.

Shepherd's Glen was a nice little town once you left it. I never understood how someone like Wheeler could come back to it after all those dreams he had of living in the city. But I got to understand after I left, when I just kept my thoughts on the good things, what few of them were left.

— — — — —

Alex trudged through the wet grass on the side of the road, separated from the asphalt by a metal road guard decorated with yellow reflector lights. He had no qualms with the mud since he was wearing his combat boots. He never had a good pair of civilian shoes outside of the ones he ran in. There was never a reason for him to leave the base, other than the few incidences when his squad dragged him out to one of the local bars.

When everyone left for home on leave, Alex enjoyed the quiet desolation of the barracks. There was no other home for him outside of that small room. He'd only made one effort to come back to Shepherd's Glen on Christmas two years ago, but the moment he saw that sign on the side of the road, he simply couldn't cross it.

It'd been nearly four years since he left in the middle of the night, with nothing but the same faded duffel he carried over his shoulder now. It hung limply across his back with only a handful of memories resting inside it. "A. Shepherd" was printed across it, but the "A." didn't stand for Alex. It belonged to his father, one of the few things Alex had willingly taken from him.

The mist floated across the moon lit road and carried a bitter cold with it. Alex zipped up his Khaki jacket with the faded, tri-color skin of desert camoflauge. It was similar to the stale smelling, olive colored field jacket his father use to wear proudly, when he wasn't wearing his Sheriff's uniform. Alex even sewed his unit's patch on the left shoulder and an American flag on the right so there wouldn't be any mistake what kind of jacket it was.

The forest was surprisingly quiet, even for that time of year. The sound of the mud squishing under his soles seemed to carry for miles in that thick fog. The wind occasionally whistled past and rustled through the trees, but no animals or insects called out into the night. It was an empty, desolate feeling, the same feeling Alex had expected his hometown to give him on his return.

But the mud stopped gurgling when Alex suddenly came to a halt. He thought he'd heard something, a faint whisper hiding beneath the wind. It called quietly, "_Alex". _His eyes walked across the tree line, doubling back across their tracks several times, but there was nothing behind those trees but a thick curtain of darkness.

Alex opened his mouth to call out, but quickly stopped himself and instead chose to wait for the voice to graze his ears again. He wasn't convinced he'd even heard it, and as he stood there in the silence, he could feel himself sinking into that thick marsh of fog. But then the voice spoke loudly in a quick breath, _"Alex!"_ A trail of loud footsteps followed the voice like a shadow, until they faded into the emptiness lurking within that forest.

Alex still didn't call out. He recognized that voice, but knew he didn't really hear it. It wasn't possible. He cautiously walked towards the tree line, his head shifting left and right as his eyes tried to catch a glimpse of anything or anyone that may be out there.

He found something abandoned in the tall blades of grass just before they disappeared beneath the treeline. It was a stuffed animal, a Robbie the Rabbit doll from the Lakeside Amusement Park. Alex looked over it suspiciously, speaking aloud to himself, "That's Josh's." He looked at his duffel, checking to see if it was sealed as he wondered how the stuffed animal could've gotten out of it.

When he rummaged through the bottom of the duffel, he found that it was in fact Josh's doll. He still wasn't sure how the stuffed animal had gotten out. Alex bent down to pick it up, but instinctively reached with his left hand. He stopped himself midway and looked at that left hand, the lifeless fingers hidden beneath a black leather glove.

Alex's name was at the bottom of a long waiting list for one of the new, sophisticated prosthetic arms with the moving electronic parts. The Army had given him this old one as a temporary replacement. It was a fairly simple design. As he bent the elbow, the metal claw at the end tightened its grasp.

They even gave him a rubber prosthetic hand to fit over the claw if he felt self-conscious about it. But those oddly colored rubber fingers looked more like an obvious lie to Alex, so he hid them under a glove. He wouldn't mind taking off that glove when he got around to seeing his father though. He was more than happy to show off a sacrifice only a good little soldier could make.

Alex picked up the stuffed animal and dropped it back in his duffel, then continued down the road towards Shepherd's Glen. He cast an uneasy glance behind him as he walked away, but quickly dismissed any strange notions running through his mind.

When he crossed that cement border that separated nature from man, he found the town was dead quiet. Even the wind tread lightly through the empty streets. Alex wasn't sure what time it was, but it didn't seem that late. He figured his father must have tightened his stranglehold over the town. A nervous apprehension squeezed around his heart as he moved deeper into Shepherd's Glen, but he looked to the watch on his right wrist and forced his legs forward.

His eyes stopped on a poster pasted to the pillar of one of the silent buildings. It was a Missing Persons poster with Josh's face printed on it. It looked brand new, unlike the quiet decay that ate away at the rest of the town. Alex turned his back to the poster and continued on, but he could still feel Josh's eyes following him.

"Welcome home," he spoke to himself through a forced smile. Despite his whispering voice, those words bounced across the buildings and shot back at him in hollow echoes that almost seemed to mock him. He started to frown and glared at the town.

Alex stopped in front of the path leading to the town hall, looking over a monument with his family crest on it. It held two crossed swords, a typical military theme he would've expected to be the symbol for his family. He looked around, waiting for some friendly face to appear from the fog, but there was no one.

This was the town he had pictured coming back to. This was the cold, indifferent, forgetful town he imagined, the one that didn't even care when he left. There had been some hope in him that it would find a way to change his mind. But that hope finally left his body in a deep sigh as he continued down the road towards his parents' house.

The night was darker than he remembered. Only a few street lamps still flickered with life. All the buildings were pitch black. Alex's feet kicked around random cans and debris he came across on the road, trying to wake those buildings up, but not a single light shined through those windows. The grass was growing wildly, tree roots were slithering across the road, and vines were gradually swallowing up those buildings.

But it didn't strike him that something was wrong until he stopped in front of that house. The pillars of the front porch were lazily leaning in various directions, paint chips were leaping off the walls, the picket fence was falling apart, and the roof was sinking in on itself. As Alex looked over that dilapidated home, he thought aloud, "This isn't my father's house."


	3. The Forgotten Son

— **The Forgotten Son** —

* * *

We were always a military family, even though we didn't live anywhere near a base and my father had been a Sheriff for more years than he was a soldier. But Shepherd's Glen was our town, and I guess he felt responsible to keep watch over it.

My father had groomed me for the Army the second I came into this world, but at some point decided I didn't quite meet the qualifications. I remember one night after a Thanksgiving dinner when he had a few too many, he told me he wished he had given more. "That's somethin' you'll never understand Alex. You're not willin' to even give a little."

Elle could never quite understand why I always addressed him as "Father". She didn't seem to get that it wasn't a name, it was a rank.

— — — — —

Alex voyaged up the walkway to the front door of his parents' house. He counted the cracks running through the pavement as he passed them, remembering how he used to avoid stepping on cracks as a little boy when someone told him they'd break his mother's back.

The musty wooden steps up to the front porch strained under the weight of his body and objected to each of his foot steps with loud groans. The house seemed even worse up close, like walking up to an old man and seeing just how deep the wrinkles ran through his face. He knocked on the front door, but there was no answer. His eyes looked over to the window looking into the living room.

The curtains were drawn, but Alex could see a light cast behind them. As the second series of knocks came from his hand and echoed through the house, he saw a shadow pass across the window. He called out, "Hello?" But no one replied.

When he twisted the door knob, he found that it wasn't locked, but the frame had become so warped that the door wouldn't even budge, no matter how hard he drove his shoulder into it. Alex wandered to the window and looked inside, his eyes struggling to penetrate the white veil of those curtains. He could just make out a chair resting behind them, still rocking, but it was empty.

After one last courtesy knock, Alex tried to open the window, but it was stuck. He dug through his duffel and pulled out a KA-BAR knife he'd gotten from some Marines in exchange for a couple of British rations. It had a 9-inch, black, partially serrated blade and ended up being more useful to Alex as an MRE opener. But it was an impressive accessory none-the-less.

He wiggled the blade until it wedged itself beneath the window and pried it open until he could reach his fingers under and lift it the rest of the way up. Alex slid the knife back in its sheath and clipped it to the belt holding up his jeans, then stepped through the open window into his parents' home.

"Hello? Mom?" Alex called into the quiet home. He looked back to the empty chair before the open window, remembering how his mom used to sit there for hours and even days. She'd just stare out the window, waiting for the day she'd spot Josh walking up that path to the front door. There were a dozen pictures of Josh surrounding the window like a shrine, as if she'd ever forget his face. His mom didn't even seem to hear Alex when he told her goodbye, before he stepped out that front door and left this family for a new one. But that new family didn't want him anymore.

There was only one lamp on in the living room and it cast thick shadows across the walls and ceiling. Alex noticed the clean outlines of several pictures that no longer hung upon the walls. When he looked over the ones that were still there, he realized there wasn't a picture of him anywhere. The sinking feeling inside him was only slight as he'd grown into his parents' indifference during his adolescence.

The floorboards creaked beneath Alex's footsteps and seemed to echo through eternity in that empty house. He stepped into the hallway and noticed a large mound of mail on top of the desk next to the staircase leading to the second floor. The pile was overflowing and some of it had fallen onto the floor. He found the letter he'd written from the hospital amongst that forgotten pile, unopened.

A small pamphlet caught Alex's eyes and he picked it up. It was from the Department of Veteran Affairs, entitled "**A GUIDE FOR MILITARY FAMILIES ON HOMECOMING**". He opened it and read,

* * *

_The days and weeks after a homecoming from war can be filled with excitement, relief, and many other feelings. Following the veteran's return, the entire family will go through a transition. This guide will help each of you understand readjustment during homecoming._

_Family and friends should take time to become reacquainted with their veteran. Talk and listen to one another to restore trust, support, and closeness. There may be times when you and your returning veteran feel stress, uncertainty, concern, and distance from one another. It may feel as if the service member is still fighting a war, rather than truly being home. All of these emotions are a normal part of readjustment._

_Some service members have real difficulties and struggle during their transitions back home. Understand that service members respond to experiences in a war-zone in different ways. Most service members who experience combat stress reactions will recover naturally over time. Others continue to struggle with memories of their experiences and their reactions. Family and friends should be aware of the symptoms charted below._

**_SYMPTOMS OF COMBAT STRESS REACTIONS AND PTSD_**

**_1) Re-Experiencing_**

_Sometimes after a service member has returned from combat, they may continue to think about things that happened in the war-zone. They may have nightmares about events they have witnessed or actual combat situations. At times, they may feel as though they are actually back in the war-zone. Upsetting images of the war-zone can flash into their mind making it difficult to think or concentrate. Sometimes, these images are "triggered" by reminders, such as sights or sounds or smells that remind them of their combat experience._

**_2) Avoidance and Numbing of Emotion_**

_It seems normal to not want to think about distressing thoughts and to avoid upsetting reminders. However, individuals with combat stress reactions or PTSD often go to great lengths to prevent recalling memories or discussing their past experiences. They may appear to withdraw emotionally or physically from family and friends and be numb and detached. They may resist or even become angry when asked to talk about their feelings or behaviors. This avoidance is just a reaction and not a sign that they are no longer committed to their family and relationships._

**_3) Arousal_**

_The service member may have difficulty letting their "guard down." Sometimes service members describe feeling jumpy or easily startled. They might closely examine people or places to look for signs of danger or attack. They may be overly protective of children and fear for the child's safety. It can make it hard for them to sleep and concentrate._

_Even if the person does not have PTSD, these symptoms can cause problems. Acting early can prevent symptoms from becoming worse and negatively influencing relationships, careers and the family's well-being._

* * *

Alex set the pamphlet back on the desk and walked into the kitchen. It was dark inside, but he called out anyways, "Mom?" Only the drips of the sink faucet answered him.

When he pushed through the door into the dining room, he was suddenly struck with a foul odor that tried to drive him back into the kitchen. The dining room table was decorated for dinner and two candles flickered desperately as they found themselves at the bottom of their wicks. At the center of the table stood a rotting turkey with a fresh skin of writhing maggots.

There were three places set at the table. One plate looked as though it had actually been eaten from, while the plate at the head of the table hadn't been touched since that turkey was cooked. The third plate was layered with a dozen different past dinners, as if someone had kept piling on new food even though the meal from the night before hadn't been touched.

Alex retreated to the kitchen and headed back for the hallway, making his way towards the stairs. The dust was thick on the banister and drifted up into a thick cloud that tried to lure a sneeze from Alex's nose. He reached the upstairs hallway and checked the master bedroom first, knocking on the door just before he pushed it open.

"Mom?" he called, then reluctantly followed with, "Father?" The dust covering the smooth sheets draped across the bed told Alex that no one had slept in it for a long time. The closet doors were open and half of the clothes were gone; his father's half.

His eyes spotted something sitting on the night stand next to his father's side of the bed. It was a picture of his whole family, taken for a Christmas card long ago. Alex's face had been scratched bare until it was no more than a spot of white and yellow lines. His father's voice echoed from his memories, _"This isn't your home anymore. You don't have a family in this town."_

Alex stepped out of his parents' room and moved to the bedroom he used to call his own. He smiled weakly as the nostalgia flowed through him at the sight of the bunk beds he shared with his brother. His eyes noticed a beam of light shining on the bottom bunk, Josh's bed. He found his father's old Army flashlight clipped to the bottom of the top bunk. A memory rose in Alex's mind. He could almost hear Josh's sobs echo through the room.

"_What's the matter with you?"_

"_Nothin'."_

"_Look, that stuff he says about the bogeyman is a bunch'a bull."_

"_But he's gotta picture of him."_

"_That's just from some painting. It's not real. I promise you there's no bogeyman living in Silent Hill."_

"_Okay."_

"_Take this. If you start feelin' scared, just turn it on. There's no bogeyman out there that likes the light."_

"_Thanks Alex."_

Alex grabbed the flashlight and clipped it onto one of the chest pockets of his jacket. He continued to search for fond memories in the bedroom, but quickly realized all his things were gone. It was only a memory of his brother now.

He stood before the windows, staring into the foggy world outside. On a clear night, you could see the Rose Heights Cemetery from the room. Probably why Josh got so caught up in that Bogeyman bullshit, Alex thought.

He looked to the footlocker they used to keep their toys in when his ears picked up a noise coming from inside it. As he opened the lid, the distinct sound of radio static poured over his ears. In a brief flash, he suddenly felt the heat all around him, the sweat pushing from every pore across his skin. The hollers and screams, the noise storming through his ears.

Alex sealed his eyes and focused on each breath pushing through his lips, telling his heart to settle down. When those familiar sensations faded back into his memories, he reached into the footlocker and pulled out a small toy walkie-talkie, one of the pair he and Josh used to play with.

After his legs lifted him back up, Alex noticed that the static had grown louder. It was a subtle change, but obvious to his ears. He turned in a circle and stopped when it reached its loudest point, when the radio was aimed at the closet.

Each step he took raised the volume of that white noise. When he found himself standing right in front of the closet door, the walkie-talkie was hissing wildly. His hand slid the radio into one of his pockets and wrapped around the knob, but it wouldn't budge. He shot a confused expression at the door, not remembering there ever being a lock on the closet.

His eyes ran down the surface and stopped upon something on the floor. Alex aimed the flashlight downwards, casting a dim beam of light on top of what looked like a child's drawing. When he leaned over it to get a closer look, he recognized the artistic style immediately as Josh's.

It was a crude depiction of two stick figures trapped in a world of blacks and browns. The smallest of the two figures had an obvious frown upon his face with a trail of tears following him like a shadow. He seemed to be forced into taking the hand of the second figure, who was leading him.

Alex quickly recognized the second figure when he saw the distinctive, triangle-shaped head. It was the Bogeyman.

He jumped back suddenly when the picture started moving, slowly being dragged under the door back into the closet. His eyes watched it crawl away, not even blinking once, sure that at any second this strange event would be explained. But it wasn't.

"This was a bad idea," Alex spoke to himself as he picked himself up off the floor, slung his duffel back over his shoulder, and headed for the hallway. This house didn't want him. There were too many memories here. He shouldn't have come back.

Alex's feet rushed him down the stairs, pushing him further and further from that room. But when he reached the downstairs, he quickly took notice of a slick, glistening trail of water running across the floor. One direction of the trail led through the open door going down into the basement. The other path wandered into the living room, where Alex found his mother sitting in her chair.

"Mom?" His voice didn't even faze her. There was a thick glaze across her expression that no words could penetrate.

Alex approached her cautiously, whispering gently as he came closer, "Mom." After what seemed a long moment, she turned her head towards him slowly, as if she were caught in a dream. Alex's eyes began to doubt who she was when they got a clear image of her.

Her face was pale and withered, with a yellow film across her flesh like nicotine stains. Her frizzled brown hair shined with a greasy coating and hung limply across her face. Even as she stared into Alex's eyes, her gaze seemed to be a thousand yards away as her eyes were sunken within dark, exhausted bruises.

"Alex. What are you doing here?" She spoke to him with labored words that struggled to escape the gravity of her grim expression, carried by a frail and wilted voice. Alex saw nothing left behind those eyes. He wanted to run from this shriveled, hollow shell of a woman he barely knew in the first place, but he forced himself to stay and kneeled down as if trying to coax a timid animal.

"I got discharged. I wrote you a letter, but –" Alex trailed off as he looked over to his left hand, trying to hide it from her view. But she barely even realized he was there.

"You've been gone too long," she said with a face that had forgotten everything but sorrow.

"Where's fath– _dad_ – where's dad?" Her eyes floated away from him and drifted out the windows like a loose piece of paper caught in the wind.

"He went to find Josh. Everyone's gone," she answered in an echo from miles away.

"Mom – what's going on? What happened?" Her mind was somewhere lost in that fog, far away from Alex. He spoke again, "Mom?" He timidly reached for her hands, his fingers approaching in cautious steps. "_Mom._"

She finally turned her head back towards him and spoke as her dry eyes struggled to push out a tear, "I miss your brother, Alex."

When his hand finally cupped over hers, he noticed she was holding something in her lap. Its smooth, silver surface glistened in Alex's eyes. He carefully pulled the gun from her hands, but her limp fingers didn't even realize they were holding anything at all.

He looked over the silver Colt M1911 .45, the Shepherd family crest engraved into the pistol grip, and asked his mother, "Mom – how did you get —" But the sudden, drifting echoes of an unearthly howl sliced through his words. Alex jumped to his feet and looked back towards the hallway, his twitching lips uttering, "What was that?"

His mom gazed outside that window, letting the mist carry her back to a world of dreams as she answered, "The basement."


	4. Beneath the Surface

— **Beneath the Surface** —

* * *

My mom was never a mean woman. She was never much of anything. She was just there. The only time she was part of a conversation was when she simply nodded in agreement with whatever came out of my father's mouth. I only called her "mom" because I never had another name for her.

Our eyes rarely crossed paths; I barely even knew what hers looked like. When Josh came around, she would sit with him cradled in her arms for hours in that chair out in front of the window. They'd just sit there together, diving into each others eyes all day. I used to wonder if she did the same when I was a baby. But I always knew the answer, even when I didn't want to.

— — — — —

Alex followed the trail of water into the hallway, stopping to stare at the open doorway into the basement. He looked back to his mom, but her mind was far away from that house, searching for her missing son and ignoring the one that had returned.

That sound still echoed in Alex's ears, a moan of sorrow and pain. He tried to push it out of his thoughts, but it refused to leave. His eyes looked at the silver M1911 in his hand, a pistol that was meant to be admired but never fired. He pinned the gun between his prosthetic and his chest to keep it in place as he pulled out the magazine. But he found there were no bullets loaded in that magazine.

After reinserting the magazine, he took the gun back in his hand and, in an awkward effort between his fingers and thumb, managed to pull back the slide far enough to peak into the chamber. There was a single round loaded inside. Alex looked back to his mom questioningly, but quickly left that thought behind as he voyaged through the basement door, the pistol gripped firmly in his right hand.

The light from the hallway didn't get far down that staircase into the basement before it was swallowed up by the darkness. Alex's feet made unsure steps into those dark depths, an odor of must and mold growing thicker in his nose. The beam of his flashlight danced wildly in strange movements at the bottom of those stairs, and Alex then realized the basement had become flooded. The water must've shorted out the fuse, he thought.

He dropped his duffel at the top of the stairs and continued down into the depths of the basement. His flashlight rippled across the sloshing surface of the water. Random boxes, empty paint cans, and other miscellaneous items generally lurking in a basement drifted through the water.

When Alex reached the bottom of the steps, he realized the water would rise further up his legs than his boots did. But he also realized his mom wasn't in any state of mind to deal with this flooded basement, and with a sigh that pretty much said, "Fuck it," he stepped into the cold water.

It quickly soaked through his jeans and dove into the depths of his boots, squishing between his toes. The water line just barely settled below his knees and he found it difficult to tread through it. An unnerving jolt tingled through his spine as his legs bumped into the debris floating beneath the water's surface.

Alex sloshed through the dark water to the other end of the basement, towards the door hiding the staircase that led into the backyard. He found the water pump his father had put down there a long time ago, propped up on a short wooden table and barely above the water line. Alex grunted as he pulled at the starter cord, but soon realized the generator was out of gas. There's probably a gas can in the garage, he thought.

But as he made his way back towards the stairs, a desperate whimper tugged at his ears. It sounded like the pleas of a helpless dog, the kind of whimper that someone like Alex couldn't ignore. He looked at a green military poncho with jungle camouflage hanging over the doorway separating the main area of the basement from his mom's old sewing room.

The poncho was nailed to the doorway on every side. Alex slid the silver pistol into his pocket and pulled out his knife, which easily sliced through the green tarp. As he squeezed through the cut in the poncho, he suddenly stopped at the sight of a human torso shimmering before his flashlight. But it wasn't real. It was from a mannequin, which his mother used to make dresses that she sold in town.

The room was nearly empty now, outside of that plastic torso. His mom was forced to move her sewing room upstairs as his father didn't like such feminine things just outside his cleaning room. At that thought, Alex turned his head until the door to that cleaning room settled before his gaze.

On the door hung a sign that read, "Officer's Club", which meant that Alex didn't rate to enter that room. His father was an avid hunter and would bring his kills into that room to make the gruesome, dead-eyed trophies he hung all across the walls of the house. Alex was never welcome in there, especially after the first and only time his father took him hunting.

Gentle scratches ran across the other side of that door, followed by a pathetic whimper that could've only come from a dog. He moved towards the door and his hand reached for the knob, when those scratches suddenly became desperately brutal. The animal struggled to tunnel its way through the door, but quickly gave that up in its panic and began throwing the weight of its body against the wooden surface.

Alex's legs slowly treaded backwards through the water, pulling him away from that door even as his conscience urged him towards it. But his conscience was suddenly overshadowed by fear when the dog began to howl in bloody agony as a new sound appeared from behind that door. It was the sound of muscle ripped from bone, of cold metal raping warm flesh.

His eyes turned away from the door and towards the water as a cloud of red suddenly formed on the surface. Alex's lungs quivered with quick, panicky breaths as his lips struggled to drown out those horrible howls coming from the other side of the door, "It's not real Alex. You're not hearing that – just go back upstairs."

He squeezed back through the sliced poncho and treaded in a quick but calm manner for the stairs, trying to get out of that basement as soon as possible, but also trying to keep his anxiety from going into a panic.

Alex tossed his duffel into the hallway and slammed the basement door behind him, leaning against it until he was sure he no longer heard the noises coming from his father's cleaning room. He tried to forget that scene before it could settle in his memories by busying his thoughts with something else: the gas can in the garage.

As he passed the living room, he looked at his mother, still lost in that chair, and opened his mouth to say something. But his mind stopped the words dead in his throat, telling him not to think about it. Don't even acknowledge it. Just go to the damn garage.

Alex pulled and tugged with all the strength of his right arm to get that front door unstuck, finally jimmying it open with his knife. He stepped out the open door and let himself submerge beneath that thick, white fog, hoping it would cleanse his ears of the sounds still echoing through them.

The driveway looked unfamiliar and barren to him without the company of his father's truck and squad car. It was strange that they'd both be gone. But when he stood before the garage door, something was written crudely across its surface that almost seemed to answer his question,

* * *

_**ITS IN HERE**_

* * *

As he looked at the garage, his mind drifted into memories of playing with Josh. After his brother had found their grandfather's old fedora hat, he started pretending he was Indiana Jones. Alex would press down on the remote to the garage door opener and watch as Josh made his daring escape from the collapsing tunnel, always making sure that hat didn't get left behind.

But one day, the remote somehow got left behind in the garage and was sealed inside. After that, their father made Alex pay for a keypad he installed outside the door to open it with a code.

Alex punched Josh's birthday into the keypad and the garage door opener woke abruptly from its long slumber, puttering and groaning as the door trembled violently. The gears squealed as the garage door struggled to lift off the ground. Alex started to step away from it, those groans warning him that the door could fall at any moment.

And with a series of brutal spasms that ran through the metal surface of the door, it suddenly came crashing back down to the ground like a set of jaws, refusing entry to Alex. The slanted posture and accordion grooves of the door told him it had come partly off the track, and the sulfur stench told him that he was gonna have to buy a new garage door opener.

He saw a dark, slick puddle oozing from beneath the door, but in the muffled gray moonlight, he couldn't tell what color it was. Alex just assumed it was oil.

"Fuck," he spoke solemnly to himself, realizing he had a long week ahead of him fixing up this house. He knew for sure at that moment his father was truly gone. But _where_, he couldn't figure out. He'd have to stop by the Sheriff's station the next day.

Alex turned his back to that creaking door and headed for the house. But as he was walking up the ill-tempered front steps, his whole body jumped at the sudden crash of the garage door against the pavement. He ran back and saw the whole thing had fallen off the tracks, now laying on top of the ground. His father's truck definitely was not inside the garage, but he didn't consider what that message on the door was referring to.

He stepped on top of the crumpled door and voyaged into the dark garage. He saw his father's various tools, work bench, cabinets, and lockers lining the walls of the garage. He found a small, red gas can in one of the cabinets, still sloshing with gasoline.

As Alex moved towards the outside with the gas can in his hand, he suddenly stopped when his eyes noticed something protruding from under the fallen garage door. It looked so strange and foreign he had to lean down to get a closer look. But he still couldn't tell what it was.

Was that flesh or an old dirty rag? It almost looked like a limb, but had none of the prominent features of an arm or a leg. He dared himself to touch it, but his fingers cowered at the thought. He finally gave up trying to identify the strange sight and walked out of the garage, heading towards the house.

His mom still sat in her chair, rocking with absent minded sways of her body. The mist was lurking through the open window and front door, making Alex feel as though he were in a dream. But this seemed all too real for him to give into that feeling.

He paused before the door to the basement, giving himself enough time to take a deep breath and settle his nerves.

"Mind over matter," he spoke aloud, trying to psych himself up with an old boot camp motto. "I don't mind, so it don't matter." He opened the door and carried the sloshing can of gasoline down the steps into the dark basement.

But as he began to submerge his moist legs back into the flood water, the light from upstairs suddenly vanished as the door slammed shut. He looked up the staircase from the depths of that darkness, calling up, "Mom!" But he didn't expect an answer, cursing to himself, "God fucking damn it."

He kept his eyes away from that slit poncho, forcing himself into tunnel vision by locking his gaze on the water pump. The gas gurgled loudly as he dumped the remnants of the red can into the generator. Then he primed it and ripped the starter cord out with his arm. The generator puttered weakly. It obviously hadn't been used in a long time.

With each pull of the starter cord, a large lamp at the top of a metal stand that almost touched the ceiling glowed dimly. His father must've hooked it up to the generator, in case the water blew the fuse like it had in this particular situation.

The generator finally rumbled to life and Alex got an inhale of puttering exhaust that sent him into a coughing frenzy. The pump started sucking in the flood water and pushing it out a thick hose running through a window into the backyard. The lamp on the metal stand started to glow with a dim orange hue as it slowly warmed up. And in that dim light, Alex spotted something hanging in the corner.

He gasped at a sight he at first mistook for a body bag. Then his thoughts convinced him that it was just an old travel bag for clothing when his eyes spotted the hook sticking out of the top, holding onto a metal pipe running just beneath the ceiling. But there was something odd about that hook. It looked too large for a cloths' hanger.

Alex shined his flashlight on the bag, and then everything rational suddenly slipped from his mind. The outline of a human shape pushed through the surface of the bag, and the bag itself seemed to be made of pale human skin. It started to move, pulsing and throbbing. A gush of blood erupted as a hand reached out of the top, its fingers made of rusty scalpel blades. Something was inside that fleshy pod, moaning and squirming at it struggled to free itself.

The lamp hooked up to the generator suddenly burst into a blinding white beam of light, searing Alex's eyes and forcing them to cower in a wince. He couldn't see that thing in the corner anymore and took advantage of his new found doubt by turning away and heading for the stairs. He repeated to himself over and over that he didn't see that thing, that it was just all in his mind. But his body wasn't convinced and clambered wildly through the waves of flood water.

As he reached the steps, he heard something heavy splash loudly into the water behind him, but he kept his focus on that door. He sprinted up the steps, managing to keep an awkward balance through his body that kept him from falling.

Alex crashed into the door, twisting and tugging at the knob desperately. But the door refused to move. He pounded and screamed, "_Mom! MOM! OPEN THE DOOR!" _The water splashed against the bottom steps in waves as something lurked beneath its surface, but Alex could only hear the desperate thumps of his heart as it screamed in his ears. _"Mom! It's Alex! OPEN THE FUCKING DOOR!"_

The whole staircase wobbled as he heard something claw into the bottom steps, but Alex refused to look behind him, praying that the door would open. _"I'm your son! MOM!"_ But his pleas were aimed at deaf ears.

His shoulders slumped as the hope faded from his body and he begrudgingly turned around. He turned off his flashlight, not wanting to risk the chance of confirming that this was real. But as his back slumped against the door and he fell to the ground, he could still hear something moving up those steps. When he turned on the flashlight, his mind was expecting to see nothing there, to find the empty darkness and confirm that it was just a hallucination. But his horrified gaze found an ungodly shape of flesh crawling up those stairs towards him.

"Oh God," he mumbled to himself, still unwilling to accept this thing before his eyes. Its flesh was riddled with blotches of pales and browns. Its left hand was nothing but a large rusty hook, and its right hand was the hand he'd seen crawling from the top of that bag. The abomination didn't seem to have legs, but was dragging the remains of that fleshy body bag behind it, as if still trying to escape it.

It lifted its head and Alex could see it had no face, but a scar that looked like a surgical incision. The stitching holding that scar together suddenly peeled apart and the wound opened, revealing a vertical mouth of jagged teeth.

Alex closed his eyes and spoke loudly to himself, "It's not real – it's not real – _you're not real!" _But no matter how many times he screamed those words, that creature was still lurking in the back of his mind. He opened his eyes again and found the creature still there, only a few steps away from him.

It opened its misaligned mouth and spewed blood across Alex's lap. An ear piercing scream followed, a scream driven by anger and blind rage. Alex couldn't close his eyes this time. That gruesome image possessed them. His lips whimpered, "Mom – please."

His right hand broke free from his daze and dove for the pistol in his pocket. His fingers instinctively flipped off the safety and pulled the hammer back. Alex aimed the barrel at the creature with a trembling hand and spoke in an almost pleading voice, "_Get the fuck away from me!"_

The creature leaped with its mangled arms towards Alex, but he brought up his prosthetic left arm and blocked its gapping mouth from reaching him. A surge of panic rushed through him and pulled the trigger on that gun prematurely, sending his only bullet hurdling uselessly into the ceiling.

As he felt its moist, gooey flesh across his skin, Alex's shattered mind went blank and his body took control. He dropped the pistol and pulled his knife from the sheath. The creature wrapped its lips around the tip of his prosthetic arm and dove its teeth into the plastic flesh. Alex let it keep the arm and moved around the creature, diving his knee into its back and pinning it to the staircase. He brought the long blade of his knife to its neck and drove it into the creature's flesh.

It moaned in agony, but refused to let go of his prosthetic arm. Alex's hand moved in vigorous motions as it wedged the blade deeper into the creature's flesh, until the blade finally came out the other end. The creature's body slumped down limply and slid down the steps, splashing loudly as it hit the water and sunk to the bottom. But its head was still clamped on to Alex's left arm and he shook it wildly until it finally let go, taking the rubber prosthetic hand with it.

He stared at that bare, metal claw of three fingers poking out of his left sleeve as his lungs struggled to catch up with the rest of his body. Alex mindlessly wiped the knife blade clean on his jeans and slide it back into its sheath. The door slowly creaked open and the light from the hallway shimmered off the silver pistol on the floor.

As Alex picked up the gun, reality suddenly started to flood back into his mind. The anxiety shook unbearably through his limbs and he ran into the hallway, slamming the basement door behind him. His mother called from the living room optimistically, "Josh?" But Alex couldn't hear her. The pounding beats of his heart muffled his ears.

He snatched his duffel off the floor and rushed for the bathroom, slamming the door shut behind him. He was only a few steps away from the sink, but his stomach couldn't hold it back anymore and the warm bile spewed from his lips. His knees collapsed beneath him and he fell to the floor.

Alex's whole body turned into a lifeless lump of flesh, but he managed to force his twitching hand towards the duffel. With all the energy he could negotiate, he opened the bag and dove his arm inside, pulling out an orange prescription bottle. He ravaged the top open and poured the pills into his shivering palm, taking a larger dose than usual.

They were supposed to calm his anxiety, but they weren't working. He almost took a second helping, but instead took control of himself and worked on lifting his body off the floor. His knees wobbled as he pulled himself up to the counter, but they didn't cave.

After a few panicked breaths, Alex was able to stand upright and look in the mirror as he turned on the faucet. He splashed a generous helping of the water across his face and swished it through his mouth until the taste of vomit was no more than a faint memory at the back of his throat.

He looked up to his reflection and it spoke to him reassuringly, "That didn't just happen. It was all in your mind. You're okay – you're _okay."_ He looked away as he splashed another handful of water across his face to wash away the lose tears, but when he looked back up, it wasn't his reflection anymore.

He saw Joey Bartlett, staring back at him with a sorrowful expression and accusing eyes. Alex dropped back down to the sink and pounded his fist against the counter as he screamed, _"No! No no no NO! Just stop! FUCKIN' STOP!"_ He watched the water flood down the drain as he built himself up to glancing into that mirror again. When he looked back up, searching for his own reflection, he found that Joey was gone. But Josh had taken his place.

As the cracks began to slither through the surface of the mirror like a web of vines, the pain began to pulse through his head. It throbbed harder and harder until he felt as though his skull would split. He thought he could hear an air-raid siren screaming in the distance, but that pain was so loud.

He cradled his head in his palm, but it couldn't be soothed. The mirror finally shattered and shards poured across the counter. That distant siren slowly faded into silence and Alex found the pain in his head had left with it. He felt a gust of warm air blow across his face, and when he looked up, found the mirror was completely gone. In its place was an opening, a rectangular hole right above the sink, leading into a pit of darkness.

Alex turned his eyes towards the door, but found countless strands of razor wire running across it and sealing it shut. He looked back to the hole in the wall, far past the point of convincing himself this wasn't real, and felt his gaze sink into that bottomless abyss of darkness. There was something beckoning him to voyage into the shadows. It was like a vacuum. Then, without a thought in his head, he climbed onto the counter and crawled into the hole.


	5. The Bogeyman

— **The Bogeyman** —

* * *

It was an unspoken rule of Shepherd's Glen that you didn't visit Silent Hill. No one ever asked why, they just accepted it. The only thing my father ever said about the town was that there were "strange, bad folk" up there.

When I was just a kid, my father would show me some picture from a painting, claiming it was the Bogeyman who lived up in Silent Hill. It was a painting of a man in a white robe holding a huge spear, his head hidden beneath a large triangular helmet that almost looked like a big brown metal sink. Around the man were his victims, hanging by nooses in metal cages.

It became a rite of passage in Junior High to see how far you could wander into Silent Hill. No one made it very far. The furthest I ever got was the Lakeside Amusement Park. I used to sneak out on some weekends and meet Elle up there during the winter season, when it was closed. I took Josh there once when the park was open. I haven't been back since.

— — — — —

The movements of his body were automatic, as if his limbs knew something his mind didn't. Alex convinced himself he was just trapped in a dream and let his body take him wherever it was going, hoping that it would eventually lead him back to reality. But as he felt the grime wedging beneath his fingernails and the gusts of hot air against his face that barely left any breath for his lungs, he realized that this was reality. At least for him.

He reached the end of the cramped tunnel and pulled himself out of the hole. When he saw the bathroom, he thought that he'd somehow gotten turned around in the strange tunnel that had appeared behind the mirror. But his flashlight cut through the darkness of that room and revealed that it was instead some perverse reflection of the bathroom.

It was an industrial nightmare. The slick, ceramic surface of the sink had been replaced with frigid metal that felt harsh against his fingers from the layers of rust building on top of it. The tile floor was gone and the only thing separating Alex from the seemingly eternal abyss of darkness below was a floor of flimsy, rusty grating. The metal grating seemed to slump under the weight of his body.

There was a dim light and a low, swooping hum coming from above him, occasionally accompanied by a sharp dry squeal. Alex looked up and saw a circular opening in the ceiling with a large spinning fan, but it only had one spade-shaped blade. The light was coming from above it and the shadow of that lone blade swept across his eyes.

He looked down towards the bathtub. Grimy black water was seeping from holes that had been chewed through the tub's surface by the famished rust that seemed to be consuming everything around him. The vague familiarity suddenly struck him as he heard the distant clanks of machinery and plodding _whoosh_ of that lone fan blade above him. This was the world from his nightmares.

It gave him a dizzying exhilaration, a feeling that was almost comforting simply because he knew it so well. The sensations running through his body were too vivid for this to just be another nightmare. I'm not waking up from this, he thought.

Alex approached the bathtub and found a pool of water still lurking inside. Black muck had settled on its surface, but Alex's eyes could still see beneath that grime and found something floating within the water. It was a face staring up at him with empty eyes. It seemed familiar to him, but he couldn't quite match that face with the ones in his memories.

He rolled up the sleeve of his right arm and dove his hand beneath the slimy algae, grasping that face and pulling it out. It was a ceramic mask, pale white without a single color of detail to it. When he looked over the face, he realized it was his mom. But it had a glowing smile on its expression, something he'd never seen on her. Alex slid the mask into a large pocket in the lining of his jacket, then stepped away from the tub towards the bathroom door.

There was no razor wire blocking him from that door, but it wasn't even the same door anymore. It was a thick steel door with a valve in its center, looking like it came from a submarine. Alex struggled to turn the valve with one hand, but finally got it to budge as it squealed sharply and he spun the valve until the heavy slab of metal creaked open on rusted hinges.

His flashlight beam stepped out into the hallway first, bumping into an image that made Alex suddenly lunge back. The sight of a man hanging upside-down from the ceiling startled him, but as his eyes soaked in that image, it became a perverse curiosity for him.

It's initial appearance was that of a man, but under further scrutiny from Alex's eyes, he found it was instead some deformed creature that may have once been a man. But not anymore. Its head was a lumpy pouch of flesh that looked like it was filled with mush. The facial features had been warped into sealed, cancerous growths that barely resembled what they once were, and what seemed to be a nose was leaking a pulpy brown liquid.

The torso was clothed in layers of stained bandages and the arms dangled limply from its sides. But only one of the arms seemed normal. The other was withered and shrunken, only reaching as far as the elbow, and had three long fingers stretching the rest of the length. Those fingers seemed to have at least a dozen joints running through them. Alex then noticed the strange body was hanging by only one leg. The thighs joined together at the knees and formed into a single stump of a leg, as if its two legs had melted into one.

Alex pulled out his knife and jabbed at the body, but it didn't come to life as he had expected it to. Still, he felt uneasy around it, and it took a promise from his mind that this wasn't real to get his legs to carry him into the hallway.

When he stepped out of the bathroom, the small walkie-talkie in his pocket started to hiss, and the scratchy lyrics to an old song started to echo through the hallway:

"_We'll meet again  
Don't know where  
Don't know when_ ..._"_

He recognized that voice instantly as Vera Lynn, a singer his grandfather would listen to endlessly in his room when he lived in the same house as Alex, when his grandfather was waiting for Death to finally catch up to him.

"_But I know we'll meet again  
Some sunny day."_

Alex found the hallway was filled with more hanging bodies, forming two rows. The legs they hung from seemed to be attached to a series of tracks in the ceiling, but they remained motionless. There were empty spaces throughout the two rows, which linked together and formed a narrow path through the maze of hanging bodies. Alex slowly slid through those empty spaces, trying to keep as much distance from the bodies as he could.

"_Keep smiling through  
Just like you always do ..."_

The bandages wrapped around their torsos seemed to quiver and writhe, when Alex's eyes noticed a few stray maggots slipping from beneath those bandages. He could almost hear them, all chewing and gnawing in unison at the dead flesh of those bodies. It was sickening and made Alex move through that maze quickly. He carelessly bumped into the bodies and sent them swaying, which only motivated him to move even faster, until is seemed both rows of deformed flesh had come to life.

" _'Till the blue skies  
Drive the dark clouds far away."_

In the midst of that frenzied crowd of swaying bodies, his lungs began to panic and drew in more breaths than it needed. As Alex desperately pushed through the bodies, looking for a way out of that maze, his legs started to drag as if a heavy weight was pulling them down and his hand tingled, feeling like needles were running through his blood. He couldn't see the walls of the hallway anymore, but just bleeding, peeling dead flesh all around him.

"_So, will you please say hello  
To the folks that I know  
Tell them I won't be long ..."_

The stench filled his nose and its putrid taste seeped into mouth. He felt as though his brain was sloshing around in his head. The tracks in the ceiling from which the bodies hung from came to life with a rhythmic clank of machinery and the gears started to push the bodies forward, shoving past Alex and pushing him on the ground.

"_They'll be happy to know  
That as you saw me go  
I was singing this song."_

The bodies swayed above him, their unusually long fingers grazing his face. Writhing maggots and drops of that pulpy brown liquid showered across Alex. But he couldn't move. He could feel a pain in his chest as if it were tightening around his overactive heart to smother it. Time seemed to move in brief flashes before his eyes and Alex lost his grip on reality. He was sure that he was going to die.

"_We'll meet again  
Don't know where  
Don't know when  
But I know we'll meet again  
Some sunny day."_

The voice of Vera Lynn seemed to keep him grounded, and he soon found himself crawling across the metal grating of the floor. He was moving into a larger room that the hallway opened up into, out from under the assembly line of bodies. When he saw a figure sitting before a window, he realized he was in the living room.

The two rows of bodies were carried up the mechanical tracks towards the upstairs, through the area where the stairs should have been but weren't. An intense, overwhelming feeling of dread still lingered in Alex's body as his thoughts tried to convince him the feeling would eventually pass. He recognized those intense, horrible sensations as a panic attack. The medication wasn't working. He barely dared to even move.

His eyes pulled themselves up off the floor and gazed at the figure sitting by the window. Alex called out pathetically, "Mom," but his pleas were ignored.

As the dread settled and his senses numbed, Alex was able to pick himself up on his feet. He looked up and found a platform above him, the second floor, but there seemed to be no way up to it. His eyes moved back to the shape before the window and he found it sitting in a wheelchair. When he came close enough to douse the figure in the beam of his flashlight, he found something that looked vaguely like his mother, but wasn't.

It was an inanimate shape of his mom hardened beneath a shell of wood and bark. Roots sprouted from her feet, spiraled around the spokes of the wheelchair, and dug into the triangular-shaped gaps of the metal grating. Whatever face the figure may have had was hidden beneath a tangled web of vines. Those same vines flowed from the back of the head like thick, stiff strands of hair. The blank face seemed to be aimed towards the window, but when Alex looked through the glass, he could see nothing but an eternal stretch of darkness.

He remembered the mask he'd found in the bathroom and pulled it out of his jacket pocket, then placed it upon the blank face. That benign, smiling expression only seemed to make the figure even more unnerving, then the head started to move. The weight of the mask made it slump down until that gleeful face was staring at the figure's lap. That's when Alex realized it was cradling something in its arms.

It was wrapped in a blood stained blanket and Alex's hand approached it with hesitant movements. When he peeled back a corner of the moist blanket, he found Josh's Robbie the Rabbit doll.

As he reached down to pick up the doll, he was suddenly startled by a squeal of static that poured from the walkie-talkie in his pocket. A voice began to speak, trying to break through the music, but Vera Lynn kept on singing.

"_We'll meet again  
Don't know w—_

–ex — are yo—

–_n't know when  
But I know —_

–he's here —on't let me go —

–_eet again  
Some sunny day."_

Alex pulled the walkie-talkie from his pocket and spoke frantically into it, "Josh? Is that you?"

But the voice of his brother trailed away until only Vera Lynn was left on the radio. He tried repeatedly to get a hold of Josh, but the voice was gone.

He dropped the walkie-talkie back in his pocket and picked up the doll from the wheelchair bound figure. His body jumped as something crashed against the floor behind him, and when he turned around, Alex found a ladder leading up to the second floor.

But as he approached it, his eyes became more interested in a mesh screen a few feet behind the ladder. There was another room behind the screen lit up by a red heat lamp, a room that looked somewhat like the kitchen. The tiled floor was covered in moist stains that shimmered in the red light and flowed towards a large drain in the middle of the room. There was a heavy looking metal table just above that drain with an assortment of strange shapes on its surface that Alex soon recognized as a cluster of random body parts.

Some of those pieces of flesh had been stitched together to form odd looking, disproportionate limbs. And then someone entered the room.

The first thing his eyes noticed was the peculiar white light that radiated from her like an aura. When he saw her shimmering, silken strands of blond hair, the name stumbled from his mouth, "Elle?" But Alex quickly realized it was not her. The only characteristics they shared was blond hair and virgin white skin. But it wasn't Elle.

Her hair was ridiculously long, reaching halfway down her thighs, and draped across most of her body. Alex wasn't sure, but it seemed as though she may not have been wearing any clothes beneath those flowing drapes of hair.

The angelic woman walked towards the table in the middle of the room, her bare feet smacking against the stained tiles. Her long hair swept gracefully in rhythm to the celestial movements of her body. But she stopped when she reached the table and her head turned towards Alex. He could only tell that she was looking at him from the tip of her nose, which barely peaked out from under her strands of hair.

She approached the mesh screen that separated Alex from the room with deliberate strides that just briefly pushed a glimpse of her body through her shroud of hair. Alex awkwardly forced his eyes away from that image, but they immediately found their way back to the woman when they noticed a strange line, like a cut, that ran vertically across her body. It seemed to separate the two halves of her body evenly, but before Alex's eyes could dwell on the sight any further, her hair swarmed back around her.

She stood just before him, only that mesh screen separating them, and Alex started to remember that nurse in Germany. A question burned through his thoughts, but he didn't dare speak to this angel before him.

Her slender fingers pressed through the gaps in the mesh and reached out to him. Alex's eyes cowered to the ground as he felt they didn't deserve to look upon her, but his hand rose nervously towards those delicate fingers. She leaned her face closer to the screen and her plush lips pushed through her hair. Alex allowed his eyes one brief look before he turned them back to the ground, noticing that same line that ran up her body also cutting across her lips and nose, separating her face symmetrically.

But as his eyes drifted back to the ground, he caught a glimpse of her other hand and what it was holding. His eyes locked on that sight and his hand pulled away from her. Alex slowly started to back away from the mesh as he saw she was holding part of a severed arm, cut off just below the elbow.

The arm had become bloated from methane, but there was an odd familiarity to it, almost intimate. Alex held up his prosthetic arm before his eyes, comparing it to that severed arm in her hand, and realized why it was so familiar to him. Even though he couldn't find her eyes beneath that shroud of hair, Alex could feel her gaze moving over him, harvesting every piece of his flesh.

"What the hell are you?" he heard himself asking, but she didn't respond. The glistening light radiating from her no longer seemed heavenly to Alex. He felt as though it were clinging to him like filth, refusing to let him escape into the shadows and away from her burning gaze.

He saw Josh's stuffed animal laying at the base of the ladder where he must've dropped it. Alex clung to it and held it close to his chest as though it were his own. But Robbie the Rabbit couldn't shield him from the stare of that woman's hidden eyes.

Alex stuffed the plush animal into his inside jacket pocket and clambered up the ladder desperately to get away from that woman on the other side of the mesh screen, who still gazed upon him possessively. He struggled to ascend the ladder with only one arm, but managed to do so rather quickly and found himself on the second story of the house.

He found the assembly line of deformed bodies passing through a doorway at the peak of the absent staircase. It looked as though they were moving into Alex and Josh's old room.

Alex wandered into the hallway, looking over the slimy pink flesh that covered the walls and squirted red puss. When he stepped into his old room, he found it was barely different than it was before, unlike the rest of the house. The only noticeable difference was the swaying rows of bodies being carried before the windows, and through a corridor that went deeper into the house, and the closet.

Instead of a wooden door, there were bars in front of the closet, like that of a jail cell. As Alex moved closer to those bars, he noticed that there was a long, dank hallway on the other side of them. It almost looked like a hallway from a hospital, coated in dilapidated shades of brown. And then he saw the little boy kneeling over the floor, drawing a picture with his crayons.

Alex stepped closer, pushing his face as far as it would go between those bars. He looked over the boy a long time, watching him hum happily as he colored that picture. Alex didn't believe what he saw and spoke to the boy, "Josh? Is that you?"

The boy continued to run his crayon frantically across his picture, not even looking up when he asked Alex, "Where's Robbie? You promised you'd get him for me."

"How are you even here?" Alex asked, not even hearing what Josh said.

"Dad told us never to go there, but you promised." Alex kneeled down to try and get a look at his face, to try and convince his eyes it was really Josh. He noticed a shackle clamped around Josh's left wrist. It was attached to a rusty chain that ran across the floor and out of Alex's sight.

"Josh? What the hell is going on?" Alex could hear Josh sniffling his nose as he continued to color his picture, refusing to meet Alex's eyes.

"You promised. Dad told me not to play with you, but you promised."

Alex was starting to get irritated with him, but held back that annoyance beneath a passive tone as he spoke again, "Josh, tell me what's going on."

Josh suddenly threw his crayon against the floor, shattering it into two pieces, and looked up at Alex with tears drizzling from his eyes. He whimpered in an angry voice, "Dad's gonna be mad at me, but you _promised!"_

"Josh, just relax, okay? I need to know wha—"

"_No! I want Robbie! You promised you'd get him for me!"_

That annoyance simmering within Alex suddenly became a surge of anger that pushed him up on his feet and he screamed, "_SHUT UP _you sniveling little brat!" But Alex's anger dwindled just as quickly as it rose when he stared at Josh's whimpering expression, glistening with fresh trails of tears.

"I'm sorry. I didn't mean to yell at you pal," spoke Alex as he knelt back down to the floor and reached his hand out through the bars to Josh.

But Josh backed away from him, pleading in a quivering voice that pierced Alex's heart, "I want mom."

Alex pulled the flashlight off his jacket and reached it out towards Josh, speaking, "Look, remember this? I gave it to you. Remember? See how bright it is? Ain't got nothing to fear with this."

"_I want my mommy."_

Alex pinned the flashlight back onto his jacket, then remembered Josh's stuffed animal was in his jacket pocket. He pulled Robbie the Rabbit out of hiding and handed it to Josh through the bars, coaxing his brother in as tender a voice as he could manage, "Hey, look who I found."

Josh eyed the stuffed animal and took a timid step forward, but still kept his distance from Alex.

"See? It's Robbie. I got him, just like I promised you buddy." Alex shook the doll lightly, moving its limbs and ears around.

Josh started to approach him with cautious steps and Alex urged him closer, "He's been asking for ya Josh, wondering where you went. He missed you." Josh smiled a little and took the doll from Alex's hand, then pulled it close to his chest and squeezed it hard.

Alex looked at the chain bound to Josh's wrist again, but decided not to ask about it just yet, and instead spoke to him, "Dad would never give you a toy like that, would he?"

"No," answered Josh as his eyes sunk to the floor timidly.

"But I would, wouldn't I?"

"Yeah."

"Why's that?"

" 'Cause you're my brother."

"That's right, and that means I love you, doesn't it?"

"Yeah," spoke Josh as a smile grew on his face. His eyes finally met Alex's and he said, "Thanks Alex."

Alex smiled and reached his arms through the bars, speaking, "Come here buddy."

But Josh's smile suddenly faded away as his eyes locked upon Alex's left arm and he dropped the doll on the floor. Alex looked over at his arm and saw that three fingered metal claw at the end of his prosthetic, opened menacingly like a set of jaws.

As Josh backed away from Alex and the doll, Alex struggled to explain, "No – buddy, it's not real. It's just a prosthetic. It won't hurt you, I promise." But Josh didn't believe him and continued to back away from the bars. The chain attached to Josh's wrist started to clank loudly as it slithered across the floor. But Josh wasn't moving it.

A shadow entered the hallway from Josh's right and quickly consumed him, only leaving a faint glimmer from Josh's moist eyes for Alex to see. The shadow slithered up the wall and started to take a distinctive shape which pulled Alex back on his feet. He shook his head with disbelief and spoke aloud with dread in his voice, _"No."_

The sound of screeching metal screamed in Alex's ears. He could feel the vibrations of that piercing noise tightening the skin across the back of his neck. His heart trembled with frantic beats and Alex stepped away from the bars, but suddenly remembered Josh was on the other end of them.

"Josh – _run!"_ he screamed. But Alex soon realized how futile that would be when he discovered what the other end of that chain was connected to.

The first thing to enter the hallway was the tip of that pointed helmet, jutting out like a bird's beak. The massive over bite of the lip on that helmet cast a long shadow down the front of the man's tainted white robe. His robe hung down to his ankles, stained in shades of brown that might have once been red. The flesh on his arms was so pale, Alex couldn't tell where they started and his robe ended.

The only thing that overshadowed that massive brown helmet perched with a great weight upon the man's shoulders was the large, jagged, rusty sword the man dragged with his left hand. But it looked more like a giant knife than a large sword. The man's skinny arm strained to drag that heavy blade behind him, which squealed sharply as it was pulled across the floor. His grunts echoed from within that massive, triangular helmet that swallowed his head.

Alex pulled out his pistol and aimed in on the man, forgetting that he had no ammunition, and screamed frantically at his brother, "Josh, get away from him!"

But Josh moved closer to the man, following the chain shackled to the man's right wrist, the rusty chain that bound them together.

"_JOSH! What the fuck are you doing?"_

Josh reached up and took the man's hand. As their fingers intertwined, Alex screamed out, "_Josh! God dammit – GET THE FUCK AWAY FROM HIM!"_

Alex could hear the sirens screaming, growing so loud in his ears that it made his face wince. His knees started to buckle and his sight grew dim. The last image he saw was the Bogeyman leading his brother down the hallway, away from him. Then everything went black, and Alex fell.

He could hear himself talking to Joey somewhere deep within that darkness, words he had heard before:

"_What did you do?"_

"_No – no, Alex, you were shooting at her."_

"_It was a warning shot. I was just trying to get her to stop."_

"_Don't tell me that. You were fucking shooting at her Alex. I KNOW you were!"_

"_I wasn't aiming anywhere near her. I was just trying to scare her."_

"_You can't just start shooting like that Alex! How the fuck do you think the rest of us are gonna react to it?"_

"_Jesus Christ – Joey, what did you do?"_

A flash of red shot across Alex's eyes and a blunt pain struck him in the back of his head, squeezing a groan from his lips. After a long moment of laying on the floor, Alex finally opened his eyes and found himself in the bathroom. He lifted himself off the floor, rubbing the back of his head, and looked around. After the daze had left his mind, he found the bathroom was just as it should be. The mirror wasn't broken and there was no razor wire covering the door. Everything was normal.

A sigh of relief puffed from his lips and he smiled, convinced that it had all been a dream. It was the only logical thing. It was just a bad nightmare. Maybe he took too many of those pills, maybe he just fell and hit his head on the floor. Whatever the cause, it was still just a dream.

But when he stood up on his feet, he found the Robbie the Rabbit doll perched on top of the sink faucet, its glassy eyes staring at Alex and shattering whatever confidence he had that it had all been a dream.


	6. Missing Persons

— **Missing Persons**** —**

* * *

My grandfather was one of the "Chosin Few" from the Korean War. He lost half a leg, a foot, and some fingers to frostbite, and spent his later years in our home, sitting quietly in a wheelchair. He'd just stare out the window all day, listening to the same Vera Lynn record over and over, as if he was waiting for something. I only remember my grandfather saying one thing to me my entire life, "The worst thing Death can do is ignore you."

Then one morning, my father simply told me he was gone, and his room became my mom's sewing room. I was too young to realize what my father meant by that and took it literally, expecting one day my grandfather would come home. But he never did. To me, it was like he just disappeared.

But it seems like that's a tradition in my family. I had a cousin who helped my mom make dresses in the summer. She and her deadbeat husband just vanished without a trace one day. The last place they were seen was Silent Hill, so my father voyaged into that town for maybe the first time in his life to look for them.

I don't know what he found, but it seems like that was around the time he started telling me about the Bogeyman. The second time he went into Silent Hill was when Josh disappeared. He was gone for weeks and only came back once to tell me I didn't have a home anymore.

Now my father's vanished and my mom's barely even here. But, I feel like I already know where he went.

— — — — —

Alex knelt down and scooped the pills scattered across the bathroom floor back into their orange prescription bottle. He looked over the label on the bottle, trying to find a mention of side effects, but couldn't keep his mind focused as he felt the eyes of that stuffed animal looking at him. He dropped the bottle of pills into his duffel and reluctantly looked up to Robbie the Rabbit, still perched on top of the faucet.

Alex never noticed how creepy the benign expression on that doll's face was. It was mostly the eyes. They bulged from its plush pink face with a crazed detachment. He wondered how Josh could ever want such an unsettling looking doll like that.

He stood up from the floor and reached for the doll to drop it back in his bag, not even questioning how it had gotten out in the first place. But when he grabbed the doll, it felt wet against his fingers. His expression scrunched in disgust and he took a closer look, noticing red stains smudged around the doll's mouth and across its chest. Alex squeezed it between his fingers and a dark red liquid started seeping from its plush skin, bubbling up like from a plump sponge and splattering against the white ceramic sink.

Alex dropped the doll and looked at his hand as though it had been infected with a disease. The red smudges across his palm looked like blood. Images from the depths of his memories seemed to rise before his eyes. He saw that little girl laying limp in the road, the blood mixing with the sand. He heard a single gunshot pop in his ears and saw the door of a blue chemical toilet open on creaky hinges.

Alex quickly turned on the faucet and doused his hand in the water before he could fall further into those memories. He grabbed the decorative guest soap that was never meant to be used and rolled the small oval bar in his palm until it gathered enough suds. When he was finished with his hand, he started to wash the doll, soaking it and wringing it out until the water no longer came out with a hint of red. As he did this, his mind went through elaborate efforts to explain what had happened, reasoning that the doll must have soaked up some dirty water on the side of the road when it fell out of his duffel.

He patted the stuffed animal down with a towel, then dropped it back in his bag, keeping it wrapped in the towel as he didn't want to see those wide glassy eyes staring at him again. Alex slung the duffel over his shoulder and stepped out of the bathroom.

He was reluctant to step into the hallway at first, but was relieved to do so when he found nothing was different. Everything was just as it should be. Then he passed the door leading into the basement and stared at it a long time. Alex didn't want to go back down there, but his mind was determined to prove that it had all been a nightmare. His eyes noticed the gleam coming off the wet footprints still on the hardwood floor and followed them to his mom, who was still sitting before that window and muttering something to herself.

Alex's arm trembled as it approached the doorknob, the cold musty air from the basement pouring in through the cracks around the door and clinging to his moist hand. The hinges groaned and announced his presence to anything that may be waiting down there for him.

The lamp hooked up to the water pump cast a bright light that slid across the damp floor and glared in Alex's eyes. As he stepped through the doorway, he kept his palm rested atop the hilt of his knife, but then quickly cupped his hand around his mouth and nose. The exhaust from the generator had built up in the basement and smothered his lungs with a cloud of burning diesel. That smell brought up more memories in Alex's mind, memories of his squad's daily patrols. He remembered those rich odors of diesel, smoldering garbage, stale cigarette smoke, and wet dog, all of them brawling with each other for dominance.

Alex coughed and gagged as he descended the steps, moving quickly to shut the water pump off. All the water had been sucked out, except for a slick surface left across the basement floor. The generator puttered for a while after Alex cut it off, not willing to return to its long slumber. The lamp suddenly shut off and the darkness swallowed him. When he switched his flashlight on, the outline of the beam was highlighted by the clouds of exhaust.

Alex pulled the collar of his black t-shirt over his nose, but it did little to stop his lungs from gagging. He opened the door leading to the backyard and rushed up the steps. He flung open the door at the peak of the steps and gasped for clean air as he stumbled outside.

"Jesus," Alex mumbled to himself, imagining his father's reaction if he were to see the backyard. The grass had gone wild in his father's absence and nearly reached Alex's knees. He felt a heavy weight of responsibility sinking in his stomach, as though he would be blamed for the unkempt lawn. His father was meticulous about the yard and would often make Alex cut the whole thing over repeatedly if he found even a single blade rising above the rest. Sometimes Alex had felt that his father only trusted him with the yard work as an excuse to torment him.

He wandered through the backyard aimlessly, wading through those tall blades of grass as he waited for the basement to vent out. He found something he barely recognized at first, the roof of a doghouse poking out of the grass. As Alex read the name "PATTON" printed over the entrance, he reached back into his memories, convinced that his parents had gotten rid of that doghouse nearly ten years earlier.

He could hear his prepubescent voice pleading with his father:

"_The door's locked!"_

"_That dog is your responsibility, Alex."_

"_Open the door!"_

"_I've given you everything you need soldier."_

"_I can't!"_

"_He's already chewed halfway through that leash. It's not gonna hold him back much longer."_

"_Let me in!"_

"_Quit your crying boy! He's rabid! That's not your dog anymore."_

"_Father, please!"_

"_PLEASE? Shoot that goddamned dog right now!"_

"_Don't make me do this!"_

"_You have your orders soldier. It's him or you."_

Alex turned away from that unpleasant reminiscing and headed back to the basement door. As he stepped back into the stairway, he found the stench was still heavy, but the fumes had escaped. He switched his flashlight back on and wandered down the steps.

The debris which had previously been floating through the flood water had settled on the barren floor into a minefield of clutter. Alex searched through that junk for the rubber hand to fit over the claw on the end of his prosthetic arm, but it was nowhere to be seen. The only thing he found was a dog collar before the door to his father's cleaning room, which he quickly discarded the moment he realized what it was.

As he had hoped, there was no body down there or any trace of that strange creature he dreamed about. It seemed so real to him, but he convinced himself that the nightmare had gotten lost in the memories. It never happened, no matter how much it felt like it did.

Alex made his way up the steps to the house, and when he immersed into the faint glow of the hallway light, he looked at the broken watch around his right wrist and remembered why he came back to this town in the first place. He couldn't leave just yet, not until he saw Mr. Bartlett.

From the hallway, Alex took one last look into that basement, part of him still not convinced. He finally shut the door and turned around, surprised to find his mom standing only a foot away from him.

The hallway light revealed more than he wanted to know about the extent his mom's features had been ravaged by her sorrow. He could see the cracks of red veins running through her weary eyes as they studied him closely behind a delirious gleam. Her decrepit fingers shook as she struggled to lift them up towards his face. The flesh around her arm seemed to be shrink-wrapped around the bone and he stepped cautiously away from her sickeningly frail hand.

"Mom? What're you –"

"Josh?" she asked in a gust of despair, longing, disbelief, and wishful thinking. A crooked smile struggled to grow across her barren expression. Alex could see the thick plaque growing between her yellow teeth and the white film covering her tongue.

"You've gotten so big," she spoke as her skeletal fingers desperately reached for his cheek.

Alex dodged her harsh caress and spoke, "Mom, it's Alex." But her desperation shielded her from his words. When he started to back away, he noticed the tremors shaking through her knees as her frail legs struggled to hold her up.

"Josh – you've been gone so long."

"_Mom_, I'm _Alex."_

"Baby, where have you been? I've been waiting for you to come home _so long."_

Alex found himself cornered against the wall and a shiver ran through his skin as she came closer, reaching that withered arm out towards him. He spoke to her, almost pleading, "Mom, I'm _Alex!_ Josh is gone! He's not coming back!"

Her voice began to crack and quiver in synch to her twitching lips and dry tears as she spoke, "Mommy loves you _so_ much."

Panic began to shake through his limbs and he forced his eyes away from her grave image before it could burn itself into his mind. He held his duffel out in front of him like a shield, but she ignored it and began to wrap her fragile arms around him.

When he felt the coarse touch of her fingers on the back of his neck, Alex suddenly pushed her away and screamed, _"Get away from me!"_

But he quickly felt a heavy blow of regret and fear when he watched his mom's frail body topple onto the floor. He dropped his bag and rushed over to her, speaking desperately, "Mom – I'm sorry, I didn't mean ..." His words trailed off as his thoughts were smothered by his guilt.

His mom looked up to him with confusion squeezing her face. She asked, "Alex? Wh– where's your brother?"

"Mom – Josh is gone." He reached towards her to help her up, but she swatted his hand away and cast her eyes to the floor, pounding an open palm against the wood.

"_No!" _she hollered. "He's here! I _know_ he is! I can feel him."

Alex hovered over her, unsure of what to do. Her eyes looked back up, this time pointing an accusing gaze at him.

"_You_," she spoke, "_You_ belonged to your father. Josh was supposed to be mine. He was _my_ baby!"

"Mom –"

"_You took him from me! BOTH of you!"_

Alex tried once more to help his mom up, but she screamed at him viciously through gritted teeth, "_Don't touch me!"_

As he backed away from her, she began to scream at him, "Why are you here? _Why aren't you looking for him?"_ Alex just stared at her in a daze, his mind lost in search of a response, and she continued, "_Get out of here! I don't want you in this house!"_

Alex turned his eyes away, unable to stare into that hatred anymore, and grabbed his duffel off the floor. He slung it and quickly walked past her, keeping his distance as though she might attack him. As he rushed out the door, her screams chased him, "_Find him! Give me back my baby!"_

He slammed the front door behind him and continued towards the road, keeping his legs moving to subdue the trembling in his knees. When he reached the sidewalk, he forced his thoughts on a detour away from his mother and towards Mr. Bartlett. Just do what you came to do and get the fuck out of here, he thought to himself as he took a left on the road towards Mr. Bartlett's house.

Alex was disgusted to find a lone tear rocking at the bottom of his eye and hissed at it, "Don't you _dare_ cry for her." But then he suddenly stopped and a bewildered look possessed his eyes. His head shook back and forth as he spoke aloud to himself, "No – this isn't right." All thoughts of his mother suddenly got pushed to the back of his mind as his eyes dove into the sight before him.

"This – this can't be real." Alex's feet crept cautiously towards the edge of the road, bringing him close enough to see it drop into an eternal gray abyss of fog.


	7. Echoes of the Departed

— **Echoes of the Departed**** —**

* * *

I hated Joey Bartlett when he first got to my unit. I joined the Army to get away from Shepherd's Glen, but there he was, reminding me of it. It was staggering to think about the odds of us ending up in the same platoon, particularly when we didn't even enlist at the same time. It's kind of funny too, because he's the only the reason I ended up coming back to my hometown.

I don't know why he joined the Army. Maybe he felt like he lived too much of a privileged life. I never knew Joey personally growing up. He was just one of those familiar faces in the crowd. All I knew about him was that his father was the mayor and he was Elle's boyfriend for about eight days in the fifth grade.

I'm not sure when we became friends. I know it was gradual, but my memories make it seem like it just all of a sudden happened. We worked well together, which is probably why they kept us in the same fire team for so long. We had what they call "implicit communication", almost to the point it was like we could read each other's mind.

We were those two guys you always associated with one another, those two friends you thought of as a single person. I wasn't Shepherd and he wasn't Bartlett. We were always just "Shepherd and Bartlett".

I came back to Shepherd's Glen to give Mr. Bartlett some of Joey's things. I've thought about telling him what happened to Joey over there, because I'm sure the Army sugar coated it or just outright lied. It seems like the right thing to do, but sometimes "right" just isn't all that simple. Sometimes it's better to just accept the lie.

— — — — —

"There was a road here – it's gone now." It was like the world just ended.

"No – this isn't real – it isn't _possible_." He was standing at the edge of reality.

"It's _not_ real – you're just seeing things." But no matter what Alex said to himself aloud, he couldn't convince his eyes. Everything just stopped at that abrupt edge of the road. It almost seemed like there was never anything there. The Earth just disappeared into gray nothingness, as if the fog had consumed everything that was once there.

But his mind refused to believe what his eyes were telling him. He reasoned and rationalized stubbornly, arguing with the image he was seeing before him. It was just a construction site. Maybe they were digging up the road to replace some pipes. That wasn't an endless cavern before his feet, but a trench he simply couldn't see the bottom of because of the fog.

Alex forced his eyes away and repeated that reasoning through his mind, hoping he'd believe it. He stepped off Craven Avenue and onto Scott Boulevard to bypass the hole in the road and continue on to Mr. Bartlett's house.

He didn't pay attention to the empty lawns or desolate homes he passed on Scott Boulevard, but rehearsed in his mind what he was going to tell Mr. Bartlett.

He doesn't want to hear that about Joey, Alex thought, but he has a right to know. He has the right to know what happened to his son. After that, he can believe whatever truth he wants.

But the speech Alex had been practicing ever since he got back stateside suddenly vanished beneath the image from his eyes. The road caved in to an endless cavern, sinking forever in a gapping mouth of fog. A telephone pole slumped over the hole at a severe angle, desperately trying to keep from being swallowed into it and almost looking like a fishing pole with its severed telephone lines dangling into cavern.

Alex sidestepped the hole onto the adjoining road of Barker Street, which ran right past the backyard of his childhood home. He remembered that street led right into the Rose Heights Cemetery, which he used to cut through as a short cut to Elle's house. From what he could recall, you could reach the Bartlett home from there as well.

Alex continued down Barker Street, trying to remember the path that ran past the Bartlett home so as to distract his thoughts from more obvious concerns he was still unwilling to admit. The street was not so much a road but an alleyway. His eyes glanced at the rickety wooden gate that led into his parents' backyard as his feet carried him past it.

He approached a short wall made of brick with an open rod-iron gate that led into the cemetery, briefly looking over the yellow sign that read "NO TRESPASSING". Alex passed through the open gate, down a short twisting corridor, and wandered into the cemetery.

Even as he stepped out of that small corridor, the smothering feeling of claustrophobia still remained within him. The cemetery was not a traditional open field of grave stones, but a tight maze of above-ground catacombs settled between tall, imposing brick walls. It gave its visitors a feeling that they were buried there as well.

Alex found himself in an enclosed yard with a mausoleum on his left and some stray grave stones on his right. The grave stones were nestled behind a short length of rod-iron fence and joined by two large trees that seemed to grasp for Alex with their bare limbs. But Alex's eyes were more curious with the mausoleum to his left, which looked like some primitive set of morgue drawers made of stone. A few of those drawers were missing some bricks and ribbons of mist were seeping from the empty spaces. Alex almost expected a hand to crawl out.

He walked down a stone path with weeds sprouting between the cracks, stepping out of the small yard and into an enclosed space housing large, stone coffins on each side. He didn't bother to read the tarnished plaques upon the stone graves, but rather forced his vision to focus forward.

The enclosures led him into another outside area, which was flanked on both sides by crumbling mausoleums. Alex noticed one structure which stood out from the rest. It was an arched entrance that had been hastily sealed shut with bricks by someone who wasn't experienced in masonry. A stone plaque next to the sealed archway displayed a family coat-of-arms depicting a foot crushing a snake, whose fangs were embedded in the foot's heel. A motto read beneath the engraved image, "Nemo me impune lacessit".

Alex placed his palm across the rough surface of the sealed entrance, feeling soft vibrations running into his bones. He pressed his ear to the wall, sure that there was something behind it, and could just barely hear the subtle cries of some lost soul sealed deep within the tomb. It was as quiet as a whisper, not even loud enough to determine for sure that it was real, but Alex could make out a distant voice laughing with desperate mania in a voice that refused to recognize its own sorrow, "A very good joke indeed – an excellent jest! We will have many a rich laugh about it at the palazzo – over our wine!"

Alex stepped away from the sealed entrance, dunking his thoughts into a cloud of doubt, and hastily stepped through the hall of mausoleums. A tree reached its long, thick, barren limbs over the brick walls. A gust of wind became trapped between those flanking mausoleums and desperately bounced between them for an escape, shaking the tree limbs and giving Alex the idea that the tree was reaching for him.

He passed through another enclosure housing stone tombs and wandered into a large open area. The stone path before him suddenly fell into a steep pit, as though an earthquake had opened the ground. Alex looked over the edge and was relieved to find he could see the bottom of the pit only a few feet down. But then his attention was diverted from the abrupt depression in pathway when his ears caught the sound of digging.

He looked to the left side of the pathway and found a tall rod-iron fence separating him from a small plot of tombstones. Those tombstones stood before open graves, recently dug, and Alex spotted a man in the depths of one of these open graves frantically slinging dirt with his shovel as he muttered to himself in a trance.

A small lantern glowed at the edge of the open grave, casting grim shadows across the man's face that looked as though dark fingers were closing around his head.

"Hello?" Alex asked as he approached the iron bars. But the man didn't reply, deeply immersed in the task before him. Then Alex's eyes suddenly began to recognize the image before him.

"Mr. Bartlett?" he asked doubtfully. The man still didn't respond, but Alex knew it was him.

"Mr. Bartlett! It's Alex – Alex Shepherd. My father's the sheriff." He waited for Mr. Bartlett to awake from his mindless digging, but Alex could only hear him muttering beneath a breath of warm alcohol, "A boy should be with his father."

Alex looked up to the spiked peaks of the rod-iron fence, intent on climbing over, but quickly gave up on the idea when he saw how high those bars reached. It would've been a difficult climb even with two arms.

His eyes settled back on Mr. Bartlett and he tried once again to reach him through words.

"I went to school with your son. We served together in the war. Joey was a good friend of mine." At the mention of his son's name, Mr. Bartlett suddenly stopped his frantic digging and looked up towards Alex as if he'd known Alex was there the whole time. His eyes were shrouded beneath those shadowy fingers reaching from the dim, flickering light of the lantern, but Alex could feel his gaze reaching deep within his soul.

"They told me it was an accident. But – I can't find him," Mr. Bartlett spoke from a despair that cut deep into his heart. His eyes drifted away from Alex and seemed to become lost in the twisting ribbons of mist drifting through the night.

"I just want my son to come home," he spoke again, mostly to himself. Mr. Bartlett dropped the shovel and started to crawl out of the open grave, muttering to himself and ignoring Alex.

"Mr. Bartlett, I have some of Joey's things. I thought you might want them." But Mr. Bartlett couldn't hear Alex anymore. He pulled himself out of the grave and wandered off, speaking under his breath, "Where's my boy?"

As his silhouette started to sink into the depths of the fog, Alex called out desperately, "Mayor Bartlett! I wanna tell you what happened to Joey!" But Mr. Bartlett was gone.

Alex pounded his prosthetic arm against the rod-iron bars, the metal claw emitting a lingering _clang_ against the fence as Alex's lips hissed, "_Shit!"_ His eyes searched for an entrance to the area Mr. Bartlett was in, desperately wanting to be rid of his excuse for staying in this town. Mr. Bartlett must've been in the Bartlett family plot, which was a private area sealed off from the rest of the cemetery. As Alex looked for a way in, he concluded the only way to find the entrance was to voyage through that pit that cut through the stone path.

Alex dropped down into the pit, noticing the circular earthen walls surrounding him. It almost looked like a bomb crater. As he walked to the opposite end of the crater, towards the other half of the stone path that led through the rest of the cemetery, his nose was suddenly struck by a thick stench of methane. That distinct odor that resembled rotten eggs brought an image of decaying flesh in Alex's mind.

As a gust of wind blew across his face, he expected it to bring a breath of fresh air, but that choking odor of methane only grew thicker in lungs. His eyes noticed several broken and bent pipes jutting from the steep walls of the crater and his mind reasoned that one of them must've been a natural gas line. Alex reached the lip of the crater on the opposite side and used the pipes to pull himself out.

When he stood up on his feet and looked around for an entrance to the Bartlett family mausoleum, his hand swatted at a buzz vibrating through his ear, like a lone fly zipping by his head. His gaze locked on a rod-iron gate settled between the tall brick walls and he knew it led into the Bartlett mausoleum. But when he reached the gate, he found it bound shut by a thick chain with a padlock.

His hand pulled at the lock, hoping it may be unlocked, but it wasn't. He tugged violently at the chain, hoping the lock would give in to his will, and even tried to force it open with his knife, but it refused to budge. Alex cursed aloud to himself, wishing he had a bullet to shoot through the padlock, then finally walked away from the gate in search of another way in.

But as he stepped away from the entrance to the locked mausoleum, that cloud of methane poured down his throat in a gust of wind and sent his lungs into a gagging panic of coughs. Alex hunched over his knees and desperately gasped for fresh air as the sound of buzzing flies started to fill his ears.

A black cloud of eager flies swarmed around him and he swatted them away as his lungs pulled in as much clean air as they could amongst the thick stench of death. Alex pulled the collar of his t-shirt over his nose, but it did little to keep that awful stench from tainting the top of his tongue. He could taste it running all the way down his throat and his mouth desperately wanted to cleanse itself with bile, but he held back his stomach's urge to vomit.

As he stumbled down the stone path, the clouds of methane and flies only grew thicker. The tremors of their rapid wings rumbled through his ear drums and their vile legs crawled across his flesh. He swatted at them in frantic motions from his hand, then zipped up his jacket until the collar was covering his face up to the base of his eyes. The stench had grown so thick that even his eyes began to water from its sickening caress.

Through the perpetually drifting black cloud of flies, Alex spotted something laying upon the stone path. It was at first unrecognizable to him, looking like some distorted charred black shape. But as he came closer, he began to recognize the disfigured shape of a human in the fetal position.

A memory briefly flashed into his mind, the aftermath of an air strike he witnessed. He remembered the shriveled, burnt bodies they'd seen. Someone had named them "Crispy Critters" in some attempt to lighten the mood and avoid facing the reality of those remains.

The focus of Alex's eyes on that burnt body was barely enough to suppress his stomach's urge to heave. The air around the body was rich with the taste of death. Its flesh had been scorched to the point that there were no distinguishable features left on it. It was just a vague shape now, like a silhouette or a shadow. The arms were crossed over its chest and fused to its methane bloated flesh. The flies crawled eagerly across it like a second skin. It almost looked as though its charred flesh was rippling with life.

Alex's lungs started to burn for fresh air and he backed away from the immolated body. He didn't pay attention to where he was walking and stumbled almost drunkenly with the frantic motions of a man immersed in water that was clawing for the surface. But Alex suddenly ignored the pleas of his lungs and stopped, staring at the shape. It was nearly unrecognizable within the fog and swarms of flies, but it almost looked as though the body was moving. His denial tried to explain to him that it was just an illusion brought on by the thick swarm of constantly moving flies. But as the shape started to lift itself up on its feet, he knew he was seeing reality.

He started to back away, not minding what was behind him, and his feet suddenly found themselves grasping for footing in mid-air as he stepped off the lip of the crater and fell in. When he hit the bottom, the breath he'd been holding in his lungs for what seemed an eternity spewed from his lips and he quickly gasped for air. His hand clawed at the collars of his jacket and shirt, freeing his lungs for a direct line to the foul air surrounding him. It still tasted awful, but the smog was thin enough to satisfy his famished gasps.

Alex laid at the bottom of that pit, his body motionless except for the heaving of his ravenous lungs, and his eyes stared up at the edge of the crater. It seemed as though he had reached some final conclusion that was going to determine reality for him. He waited for that shape to linger back into his sight, or to simply fade into his memories as another hallucination.

The fog was still, but he could feel an energy humming beneath the surface. It was a clawing hiss of whispers forever lost in the wind, barely distinguishable to his ears. He imagined it was the faint echoes of the departed souls that wandered through that cemetery, doomed to wail for all eternity without an ear to hear their cries.

Alex began to gag as the methane grew thicker and that unwelcome buzz of flies began to quake in his ears. He lifted himself on his feet and backed away from the edge of the crater, his eyes still locked on that lip for the final conclusion to reveal itself to him. And then it appeared, as if materializing from the fog itself, wobbling on a pair of unsteady legs.

Alex quickly un-slung his duffel and dove his arm into its depths, pulling out the moist towel he had wrapped Josh's doll in. He hastily folded it into a thick rectangle and muffled his mouth and nose, then zipped up the collar of his jacket to hold it in place. His lungs had to work hard to pull in air, but the towel served surprisingly well as a filter.

His hand moved indecisively between his pistol and his knife, realizing that the gun still had no ammunition and the knife required him to get close to the creature. The charred body stood at the lip of the crater and Alex saw its elbows lift into the air as its lungs sucked in breath. The flies swarmed around Alex, dodging the angry swats of his hand, until he could barely see the shape perched on the edge of the crater.

A violent wind struck him, carrying a cloud of methane so thick that Alex could feel its residue clinging across his flesh. The poisonous stench flooded into his eyes and he fell to the ground, squirming and moaning as his eyes felt as though they'd been doused with acid. Even the towel couldn't filter out that blast of smog and it clung to the walls of his lungs, burning as though he had inhaled fire.

Alex started to scream from the pain and clawed at his collar, ripping the towel out and gasping for air. But those unfiltered breaths only made the pain more intense. His back jutted into the air as his torso collapsed on itself and heaved bile from his lips. He tried to force his eyes open, but they stubbornly kept shut as tears drizzled from the slits of his sealed eyelids.

He started to crawl on the ground, away from the creature, and lifted his head up. Alex managed to open one eye just long enough to see a broken pipe jutting from the earthen wall of the crater. He crawled towards the pipe blindly until his head bumped in the edge of the crater, then his hand flailed through the air above him until he felt the coarse, rusty surface of that loose pipe.

He used his grip on the pipe to pull himself to his feet, then brutally pulled and twisted the pipe until it finally came loose from the earth. Alex gripped it in his hand and turned in the direction of the charred creature, opening one of his eyes just wide enough to see it. It was still perched on the edge of the crater, its lungs sucking in another breath of air. With a swing of his arm that felt as though it nearly dislocated his shoulder, Alex threw the pipe, which spun through the air wildly and struck the creature in the chest, knocking it off balance. But it didn't fall.

As the shape struggled to keep its balance on its unstable legs, Alex rushed towards his duffel. He picked it up by the shoulder strap, swung it once around his head, and hurled it towards the creature. The bag struck the burnt beast in the knees and it fell on the ground. Alex then ran to the edge of the crater towards the creature, forcing his gagging lungs deeper into that poisonous cloud of methane.

He jumped onto the ledge and rolled onto the stone path. Alex quickly forced himself on his feet and saw the creature writhing on the ground, struggling to lift itself up without a pair of arms to aid it. His hand grasped the metal pipe he'd thrown, lifted it into the air, and drove it down into the creature's chest like a spear.

A geyser suddenly erupted from the punctured chest of the charred shape and doused Alex in its poisonous breath. He fell backwards onto the ground writhing, kicking, and screaming as his hand desperately tried to wipe the residue from his face. It felt as though he were wiping the flesh right off. He crawled blindly across the ground and suddenly felt his duffel. He desperately ran his face across its canvas surface until the friction singed his skin, then picked the bag up and lunged away. But he didn't get far before he collapsed in a fit of coughing as his lungs tried to expel that poison.

Alex forced himself onto his feet again and wandered blindly through the cemetery, stumbling over headstones and bumping into the brick walls, until he started to taste clean air. He let his body go limp and collapsed onto the ground, then felt through the contents of his duffel. His fingers wrapped around a plastic bottle with a small amount of water and pulled it from the bag. Alex forced his eyes to open as he poured the water over them, trying to flush out the residue of that smog.

His eyes were still in pain, but he could open them again. He gave his body a short moment to catch its breath, then stood up and continued through the cemetery before that creature could find him. He didn't know if it was alive or dead, but he didn't care. He just had to get away. He didn't care about Josh, he didn't care about his mother. He didn't even care about Mr. Bartlett. He just wanted to get out of this town.

As Alex started to breath normally, he found the exit from the cemetery and stumbled into gloomily lit parking lot. A decaying truck and rusting sedan sat unused and broken down. Between them was a large pot hole that carried a puddle of grimy brown water. Alex dropped down before the puddle and dunked his face in, washing the remaining residue with the filthy water. His mouth was dry and his throat felt as though he swallowed chlorine, so Alex didn't think twice about swallowing some of that puddle water.

After dousing his jacket in the water to try and get rid of the rotten smell, Alex slung his duffel and stepped out of the parking lot onto Main Street. He took a right, remembering the Sheriff's station was only a short walk away. His legs moved with shaky knees as the adrenaline in his blood departed and both exhaustion and reality weighed down on his mind.

"You're fucking crazy," he spoke aloud to himself. His words carried through the empty streets in hollow echoes that returned to him as though they were spoken by someone else. But as much as he wanted to believe those words, as much as he preferred to simply be insane rather than accept the alternative, Alex could no longer doubt what he'd seen. This was real. His body was in too much pain to dismiss it as anything but real.

As he looked over the dim, desolate streets lined haphazardly with empty vehicles, his thoughts struggled to understand what was happening until they simply spun around his head in circles like a tornado and his mind simply went blank. He limped down the empty streets as the fog drifted through the air like a ghost of the town that once thrived here.

When he saw the glare of the light grow brighter through the mist, Alex didn't feel hope. He felt nothing. He was simply numb as he approached the Sheriff's station.

Before the walkway that led to the front door of the station was a large billboard, usually posted with activities and current events in the town. But as he got closer to the board draped in the light of a single street lamp, Alex saw it was covered with nothing but Missing Persons posters.

There wasn't even enough space on the board to carry all those posters. Stacks of them were strewn out across the pavement, some of them carried away by the wind. His eyes noticed a large section of them had been torn off the board and only one poster stood in that empty space. As he looked upon the face printed on that lone Missing Persons poster, he suddenly felt a heavy weight sink into the pit of his stomach. Beneath the picture read the name, "ELLE HOLLOWAY." Someone had written across Elle's face with a black marker, "HAVE YOU SEEN ME?!?!"

"Alex?" The voice that carried his name brought a burning sensation that replaced the hollow weight in his stomach. Alex turned around and saw a lone figure standing amongst the fog like a ghost, staring at him as though he weren't real.

The light from the lamp post glistened across her blonde hair, which looked as though it hadn't been washed in ages. She had pulled it back into a pony tail, but she nervously swept her fingers across her temple as though she were pushing back invisible bangs. Neither of them said anything. Alex and Elle just stared at each other, neither of them willing to believe they were really seeing the other.

* * *

_Author's Note: Just for clarification, the part where Alex hears a voice within a sealed tomb has nothing to do with the story. It's simply a reference to an Edgar Allen Poe story, "The Cask of Amontillado". Silent Hill is filled with random horror fiction references, so that's why I put it in there._


	8. Old Friend

— **Old Friend**** —**

* * *

When you go through basic training, they strip away the pieces of your old life to make room for the new one. They issue you a uniform and stick your civilian clothes in a warehouse. They issue you a hair cut and sweep the rest into a trash can. Even the words coming out of your mouth are Army issued gear. But there's always something you hang on to just to remind yourself of who you are, something to think about in those quiet moments before you fall asleep and something to dream about before you wake. Elle was the only memory I didn't try to leave behind in Shepherd's Glen.

One of my biggest regrets during basic training was that I didn't bring a picture of Elle with me. The only picture I had was in my memories, and that image got worn from so many dreams that the real Elle got lost in the fantasy. I got to where I wasn't even sure what she really looked like anymore. My mind convinced me I'd never seen anyone that beautiful. It was almost like she never existed outside my imagination.

Some guys in my platoon would call it "First Pussy Syndrome". But it was more like she was the only evidence that I had a life before the Army. She was the only piece I had left of my identity. Sometimes I felt like she was my identity. Other times, she was a life I'd never have.

— — — — —

For a moment, he expected Elle to simply fade away into the mist. But when he stared into her eyes, he saw she was expecting the same of him. Her bewildered expression brought a heavy weight of reality, pulling him down from the fog of his confused thoughts and numbed emotions. And that weight carried the burden of self-consciousness.

His eyes were blood shot and cleansing themselves with a constant flow of tears. Mucous was oozing from his nose and phlegm climbing up his throat. He felt as though he'd just stepped out of the gas chamber. But there was nothing he could do to improve his appearance except to simply act as though he wasn't aware of it and hope she'd follow his example.

Seeing Elle in that town only intensified Alex's new-found acceptance that this was real, that none of this was just a nightmare or hallucinations. His heart began to tremble with frantic beats and his limbs shivered anxiously. He heard the metal claw at the end of his prosthetic arm rattling and quickly hid it in his jacket pocket before Elle's eyes could take notice of it.

She circled around him cautiously, her eyes looking him over as if searching for some sign that he wasn't real. Alex's eyes looked over her as well, trying to match this woman with the image in his mind. This was not the same girl he left behind years ago.

There was no make-up or meticulously chosen clothing to buffer her appearance for his eyes. Her skin was pale with shades of cold blue. Her hair glistened with a coating of oil and was pulled back tightly into a pony tail with only a few frizzled strands sprouting freely. She was wearing a pair of dirty jeans with a light jacket over a scarlet tank top.

Elle's face had hardened into a gloomy mask that would've shattered if it tried to express anything but despair. Grim shadows were painted across her pale skin. She looked so morose that Alex almost doubted that he'd ever seen her smile.

"Are you really here?" she asked in a distant voice that sounded as though it were an echo from another world. Alex's eyes cowered from her probing gaze, turning to the ground. His hand was quivering and his legs twitching. He shuffled his limbs around awkwardly in mindless tasks, trying to mask their involuntary movements as the anxiety tightened around his heart. He desperately wanted to reach for the prescription bottle in his duffel, but didn't want to show any weakness before her eyes.

"Yeah – I'm here," Alex answered as he finally looked up, forcing a weak and crooked smile on his face. He pretended to reach across his face and scratch his temple as he wiped his nose with his right sleeve. Elle started to step towards him with suspicious movements, her muscles tensing as though anticipating he may change form at any moment.

As she approached, the tremors in Alex's hand became more obvious and he started running his fingers through his hair nervously to hide it from her. She stopped only a few feet away from him, her eyes still studying him, and her mouth started to open to say something. But she couldn't find the words she was looking for, then suddenly rushed towards Alex and flung her arms around him.

As her arms squeezed around him and she buried her face in the curve where his neck met his shoulder, Alex stood in a daze. His muscles tensed as though he'd been touched for the first time in his life. Elle's scent caressed his nose, unobstructed by perfumes or lotion, and the warmth of her body radiated into his until he felt it burning in the pit of his stomach.

"I never thought I'd see you again," she spoke with muffled words and a subtle crack running through her voice. She quickly consumed all of his senses and for a moment, Alex completely forgot everything that had happened since he returned home. His thoughts were possessed by Elle. But this only made his anxiety rise. His heart beat faster and his legs became more unstable until he felt as though he'd collapse at any moment.

Just as he began to feel like she'd never let go of him, Elle pulled away and looked into his eyes. He knew she could see everything he was trying to hide. His whole body quivered like a jolt of electricity when she placed her palm on his chest.

"Your heart's beating really fast."

"Is it?" he asked awkwardly as though he wasn't aware of it.

"Are you okay?"

"Actually – I need to sit down," Alex answered as his trembling knees started to bend. Elle grabbed his left arm to help him, but he quickly pulled away out of fear she'd feel the prosthetic beneath his sleeve.

Alex sat upon a short brick wall that lined the path towards the Sheriff's station. He had an awkward looking posture as he hunched over with his prosthetic hand still stubbornly hidden within his jacket pocket. Elle just stared at him, unsure of what was wrong.

He let his duffel slip from his shoulder and fall on the ground, then dug into it with his right arm and pulled out the orange prescription bottle. Alex popped the top off with his thumb and tipped the open mouth of the bottle to his lips, pouring a select dose of pills across his tongue.

"I get these really bad migraines," he explained as he pulled the bottle away from his mouth. Elle knelt down and picked up the white cap of the prescription bottle, briefly glancing at Alex's left arm.

"Let me help you with that," Elle offered as she reached for the bottle.

He handed her the bottle and she popped the cap back on, trying to read the label without Alex noticing. But he pulled the bottle away from her and dropped it back into the depths of his duffel.

She just watched him with quiet concern as he leaned over his knees, breathing deeply and trying to concentrate on getting control over his shaky limbs.

"Alex – are you feeling okay?" she asked.

His eyes drifted up to meet hers as he wiped his drizzling nose with his sleeve, remembering how he must look in her eyes. He began to wonder if she'd seen the same things he had.

"Uh – I ran into a skunk on the side of the road," he finally answered. "Must've scared it. It sprayed me and got me in the eyes."

She smiled faintly, as if to tell him she'd play along with the lie.

"Yeah – I was wondering what that was." Elle laughed nervously and ran her fingers across her hair, continuing, "Of course, I'm not one to say anything. I probably haven't had a real shower in about a month. Just baby wipes and bottled water. I must smell awful."

Alex's eyes wandered around his surroundings, part of him almost expecting everything to suddenly go back to the way is was supposed to be. But the fog still lingered in the empty streets.

"Elle – what happened here?"

She just shrugged and looked around.

"Everyone's just – gone." Her eyes drifted to the bulletin board covered in Missing Persons posters and she continued with a growing tremble in her voice, "First it was just a few people, then more, then a lot – and one morning the town was just empty. The roads don't go anywhere – it's like the rest of the world just doesn't exist."

Her feet shuffled around as she spoke, and when her eyes returned to meet Alex, she stretched a crooked smile across her face and tried to laugh. But it came out as an awkward, desperate gasp of air that spoke more about her state-of-mind than she wanted to reveal.

Elle finally gave up the charade and her expression collapsed into a grim look. She sat on the wall next to Alex, brushing against his left side. Alex subtly tried to pull his left arm away from her without her taking notice.

"It's just – it seems like it happened so long ago." Her eyes dropped to the ground as she spoke. "This has actually gotten to where it feels normal. But, saying it aloud like that – it just reminds me of how absolutely insane it is."

Elle looked up to Alex and continued, "God – it feels _so_ weird seeing you here. I was forgetting that I had a life before all this. It's almost like that was some past life I lived an eternity ago. But seeing you just – it's like two worlds colliding together. It's just weird – it feels so surreal."

"You're all alone here?" Alex asked.

"No, there's a few others. You remember Wheeler, right? The deputy? He's here. That weird guy you used to work for at the scrap yard, Curtis, is off at the docks trying to fix the Sheriff patrol boat, see if we can cross the lake to get out of here. Um – Mayor Bartlett, but he's pretty much on his own."

"I saw him in the cemetery," Alex interrupted.

"Yeah – he keeps looking for Joey – but he was buried in a national cemetery, so – I don't know. I guess this just completely pushed him over the edge."

Alex began to think about Joey, but quickly pushed away those thoughts and asked Elle, "Where's my father?"

Her lips parted, but she hesitated to speak, searching her thoughts for the best answer. Alex answered for her, "He disappeared too?"

"Uh – actually, it seems like he was gone before any of this started. I – I don't know – sorry. You'll have to ask Wheeler."

"Where is Wheeler?"

"He's off doing his patrols, searching for anyone else. He's probably been through every building in this town twenty times over, but – it gives him something to do."

"Isn't it kind of dangerous to just leave you here by yourself?"

Elle suddenly laughed, responding, "Alex, there's no one left to be dangerous. I mean, Mayor Bartlett's gone nuts, but he isn't a threat to anyone."

"Right," Alex spoke softly as he nodded his head, suddenly feeling alone as he concluded that he was the only one who saw those creatures.

"_Oh-my-God_," Elle suddenly started to blurt out breathlessly, "I completely forgot, your mom was here too. I was checking up on her, but then she just stopped answering the door."

"She's here," Alex spoke sullenly, his gaze burning a hole through the sidewalk.

"Is she okay?" Elle asked with a rising tone of concern.

"No. She's – no."

A silence began to drift between them and Alex fell back into his thoughts.

"Well, at least you know where she is," Elle spoke in a hasty attempt at optimism.

At this, Alex looked up into Elle's eyes. She showed him a weak smile, which faded as quickly as it appeared. Her eyes left his and looked over towards the bulletin board.

"When my mom disappeared," she spoke, "Wheeler insisted I stay here at the Sheriff's station. He started printing out those posters and told me to go staple 'em up across town. There wasn't anyone left to actually read them, but it gave me something to do. It actually worked pretty well for a little while, but then I looked at all those faces and realized something."

Elle turned back to Alex and met his eyes to speak, "They're not the ones missing. _We _are." Her gaze settled into his eyes with a look Alex couldn't quite understand. It was a look that reached deep inside him. It made him feel uncomfortable and he started to squirm before finally turning his eyes away.

But just as he turned away, he felt her hand gently squeeze his shoulder. When he looked back at Elle, he was surprised to find a genuine smile on her face.

"I'm sorry you're here," she spoke, "but I'm really glad too." In that moment, Alex suddenly saw the Elle from his memories. But her smile soon vanished beneath a veil of confusion as her hand moved down his arm. Alex could feel a sudden wave of panic shock his heart as Elle found the border where his arm morphed from flesh to plastic.

"Alex – what is this?" she asked as her hand reached further down and started to pull the end of his prosthetic from his jacket pocket. Alex didn't try to stop her. Part of him was somewhat relieved that he wouldn't have to hide it anymore.

She stared at the metal claw resting in her palm for a long while, her eyes trying to understand what it meant, possibly looking for an alternative to the obvious. Then all at once, she pulled her hand away and let his prosthetic drop, and her eyes stared intently across the street towards the wall of the cemetery. Elle said nothing and her face didn't seem to regard Alex's prosthetic arm, as though it were no concern to her.

But as his eyes lingered upon her, searching for a reaction, she looked away until he could no longer see her face. Alex could hear her nose sniffing and knew she was struggling not to cry.

"It's okay," he spoke, "This thing is just a temp loan. They're supposed to be giving me a sophisticated one with moving parts and all that. It'll be like I never even lost a hand."

"I'm sorry," she spoke in a quivering gasp, "I don't mean to get all girly on you."

"Really, it's fine. It's not a big deal," he tried to reassure her.

But she suddenly turned her head back towards him, her face consumed with an expression of disgusted anger as her eyes puffed up with tears. Her jaw was slack and her mouth open as though Alex had personally insulted her.

"Not a big deal," she mouthed to herself.

Elle's eyes briefly looked down upon Alex's prosthetic before returning to his confused expression, then her open palm slapped him across the face. Her anger seemed to pull back for only a moment as though she were shocked that she had just hit him, but it quickly returned to the surface and she randomly smacked Alex across his shoulders and chest.

"_You idiot!"_ she hissed at him, then stood up from the wall and paced down the sidewalk away from him. Alex just sat there dumbfounded, unsure as to why this anger was being directed at him. Elle spun around to face him.

"You had to leave – you just had to go," she yelled at him. "You didn't even say goodbye! You were just gone!"

"I'm sorry," Alex mumbled in a timid voice, his mind still too numb from confusion to find any other words.

"Look what you did – _look what you did to yourself!"_ As Alex glanced down at his prosthetic arm, Elle furiously wiped the tears from her face as though they would douse her anger.

"What was I supposed to think?" she continued. "You never wrote, you never called – the only reason I knew you were okay was from Joey's letters. Then – then Joey died and I didn't know what happened to you. I just expected one day you'd be dead too, so I just started thinking you were because it seemed easier. I felt like it was easier just to go ahead and get it out of the way."

She paused to wipe a few more tears, annoyed at their very presence, and asked him, "Why didn't you write me? I know you got my letters. I _know_ you did."

Alex sat silently, until he became aware of the silence and realized she was waiting for an answer.

"I didn't want a reason to come back here," he answered.

Elle just gazed into his eyes, letting his response sink into her thoughts as her anger cooled, then she looked away as she seemed to feel embarrassed by her outburst. She dug through her pockets until her fingers pulled out a pack of cigarettes and a silver Zippo, then she lit herself a cigarette and took a long drag.

She finally walked back towards Alex and returned to her seat next to him, but her gaze was still weary.

As a trail of smoke left her lips and mixed seamlessly with the fog, she spoke, "I'm sorry – but you just left me here. Just like everyone else." She set the pack of cigarettes and the lighter on the section of the wall between them. "But I guess that's what's supposed to happen, right? Everyone moves away and gets a real life while the popular girl is left behind dreaming about the glory days of prom and all that highschool bullshit."

Her gaze moved towards him, but only enough to get a glimpse through the corner of her eye.

"Do you know what that feels like?" she asked. "When someone you care about just disappears without a goodbye or anything?"

"Yeah. I do," he answered.

Her eyes finally approached him, a look of sympathy gleaming across their tear slicked surface, but there was still a lingering shred of her anger pushing her away from him.

She noticed Alex looking down at her Zippo, a silver surface with the emblem of the 75th Ranger Regiment. She picked it up and offered it to him.

"I found that in your dad's office. Take it."

"No, you keep it," Alex spoke. "I don't smoke. I didn't know _you_ did."

"Picked it up a while back. Figured no point in wasting all those cartons of cigarettes with no one here to smoke them," she said with a sardonic smirk. "You know you're in a bad spot when you force something on yourself that you don't even want."

Alex stood up and looked back towards the entrance to the Sheriff's Station.

"We should probably head inside," he spoke as he waited for Elle to inhale the last drag of her cigarette. She nodded in response and tossed the smoldering butt on the ground, extinguishing it with the sole of her shoe.

As he started to move to the station, she stopped him by speaking, "Hey," and lightly grasped the tips of his fingers. When he looked back to Elle, she slowly approached him and wrapped her arms around him, letting him prepare for her embrace this time. She lingered with that hug a long time, lightly squeezing him between her arms as if trying to squeeze a hug back from him. He slowly wrapped his own arms around her and squeezed back.

The warmth of her body gradually seeped into his flesh and soothed him until his embrace became natural.

"Please don't leave me," she whispered into his ear. "Promise you won't."

"I promise."

Elle relaxed her arms and pulled her head away until she could meet his eyes.

"You can't leave me alone," she spoke, more through her eyes than her lips. "I can't go through that again."

"I won't. I promise."


	9. Soldier's Orders

— **Soldier's Orders ****—**

* * *

Elle got a promiscuous reputation before she was even born. It was passed on from her mother, who raised Elle by herself. In a small town, gossip was your first impression on everyone, and the sins of the parents were passed on to the child. Elle also inherited my parents' disapproval. I think what bugged them most about her mom was that she became a respectable judge in town instead of some trailer trash living off of welfare.

Elle was that little girl in kindergarten that every boy seemed to have their first kiss with, or at least claimed they did. I never talked to her in elementary school and the only class we ever had together was in fifth grade. I'd stare at her when she wasn't looking, trying to see the wicked little child my parents made her out to be. Then I hit puberty.

I fell in love with her the moment she first noticed me. It was that naive love you think will last forever, the kind of bipolar love that makes you see every gesture and word as a sign of either adoration or rejection. I never could figure out what sort of relationship we had, so I eventually just got to calling her my friend. But I don't know if there's a word that could ever quite describe it.

— — — — —

"Wheeler should be back soon. He'll be happy to see someone else. He might want you to go on those patrols with him. That's the kinda stuff you did over there, right?"

Elle had become lighthearted so suddenly that Alex almost forgot about her angry outburst only moments ago. He almost expected her to start skipping up the path to the Sheriff's station like a little girl.

Alex parted his lips to answer her question, but Elle's words were quicker than his.

"I think he tried to get Curtis to go with him, but he seems more interested trying to get the town running again. Most of the power's off. We had to get a generator hooked up just to get some lights going inside the station."

Elle wedged another cigarette between her lips and lit it, perhaps to give her lungs a break from speaking or maybe to give her overly animate hands something to do. A look of glee grew on her face as she spoke with giddy words that bumped into each other as they left her lips.

"You know – it's kinda embarrassing, but – I used to day dream about you coming back into town, all dressed up in your uniform, and you just – _whisk_ me away from this place." She looked at his expression briefly, trying to gauge his reaction, then continued, "I _know_ – it's such a girly thing to think about. But how could I resist? There's just something so classically romantic about it."

Alex had trouble meeting her eyes, only glancing at them for a moment just to humor her, as he found himself unsure how to approach the subject. It felt as though his feelings for her were a secret she'd have to uncover slowly. But her attitude of jumping right into it made him feel uncomfortable, and he hoped she'd simply drop it. She didn't.

"Do you have that blue uniform?" she asked, trying to lure him into the conversation. "You know, the one you see in the commercials all the time? With the sword?"

"That's the Marine Corps," Alex answered. "I was in the Army."

"Oh," she responded, her tone somewhere between disappointment and awkward embarrassment.

As they approached the entrance to the Sheriff's station, Elle noticed Alex's sudden reluctance when his nose picked up the odor of smoldering trash.

"We started burning our trash in the dumpsters out back," she explained. "It builds up pretty quick. You really can't smell it inside."

As she reached for the front doors, Elle flicked her cigarette to the ground, already having smoked it down to the butt with her overactive lungs. She looked back as she opened the doors and smiled at Alex.

"God it's so weird you're here," she spoke in a gasp, as if to explain her giddiness.

"I'm sorry, I know I'm going on like a Chatty Cathy pulling her own string," she continued as they entered the station. "I'm just absolutely _starved_ for conversation. There's only so far you can go with guys like Wheeler and Curtis. They've gone into _man_ _mode_, looking for stuff to fix, while I'm just looking for someone to talk to."

Alex looked around the familiar hallways, noticing that they were lit by the emergency lights mounted on the walls for power outages. There were loose wires hanging from them, presumably leading to the generator Elle mentioned.

"I'm guessing you already know your way around," Elle spoke. "Not really much to do here. We gotta small stereo, but all the CDs are mine, so I don't know how interested you'd be in that."

"Can't be that bad," Alex answered.

"Yeah – you haven't seen my collection yet," Elle replied with a doubtful smile. "Most of it's from the teenage years, so even _I'm_ embarrassed to be listening to it."

Alex's memories began to recall the route to his father's office and he started to walk in that direction. But Elle grabbed his right hand as he passed, surprising him with the soft warmth his fingers were suddenly submerged in.

"I'm sure you'd probably rather stay at your own house," she began to speak, "but there's plenty of room here. I mean, all the beds are in jail cells, but it's actually pretty comfortable when the doors are open. You don't _have_ to stay here," she stopped briefly to let her eyes sink into his, then continued, "but I'd kinda like it if you did. You know – wouldn't be so boring for me."

Alex paused before he replied, not that it was a hard choice for him, but because he was partly thrown back by her bold request. His imagination also wanted a brief moment to lavish in all the possible implications that may have been in her words.

"I think I'd rather stay here," he finally spoke.

At this, a smile grew so large on Elle's face that her vanity could no longer conceal her yellowing teeth, and she unexpectedly leaned forward to kiss him on the cheek. But Alex wasn't sure where her lips were aiming and unconsciously turned his head to line up his mouth with hers.

She stopped just before his face, startled by the sudden change of course her lips were approaching. A warm gust of nervous laughter left Elle's lips and blew across his face, their eyes so close that they shared each other's panic, and she quickly pulled her head back as her flushing cheeks radiated against her pale skin.

Elle let Alex's hand slip from her grasp and looked for a hasty change of subject.

"I like your jacket," she spoke inanely, her gaze relieved to escape his own as she looked to his faded field jacket. "Did they give that to you?"

"Yeah, conciliation prize," Alex answered as he held up his prosthetic, trying too hard to escape the awkward mood with a joke.

Elle wasn't amused, her expression looking as though it were her own arm.

"Sorry. Bad joke."

"Yeah, it was," Elle spoke with blunt words that didn't need a moment of thought.

Alex continued down the hall towards his father's office, trying to leave that awkward moment behind him.

"Remember when your dad caught us in Lakeside?" she asked, just as eager to leave the moment behind them.

"Yeah. That was a fun weekend," Alex answered sarcastically as the memory stirred a smile on his face.

"God, I remember the park was closed and we saw those headlights coming towards us for about twenty minutes, but we just kept convincing ourselves it wasn't anyone to worry about."

"My father locked me up in a jail cell for the rest of the weekend."

"_I know_," Elle moaned with amused remorse. "I felt _sooo_ bad about that."

"It wasn't too bad. Wheeler kept me company and let me hang out in the lounge when my father was away. Gave me a nice memory and a funny story." He looked back to share a smile with Elle, then asked, "What did your mom do? I remember my father made you ride back in the squad car and left your mom's car at Lakeside."

"Actually, she really didn't care that much," Elle spoke with a shrug. "She just said you were a nice boy and she'd rather I be out with you than someone else."

"My father wasn't as understanding."

"Well, with good reason," Elle started to say jokingly. "I was just a bad influence. A little temptress who lured you to an empty park and a case of beer."

Alex stopped before a door labeled, "SHERIFF SHEPHERD". He paused before the open doorway, noticing that even the light was reluctant to enter the room. He switched on his flashlight and stepped inside, the beam strafing numerous newspaper clippings taped over the windows and plastered across the office like wallpaper.

My father's obsession, Alex thought.

"You wanna be alone?" Elle asked from the hallway.

"No, I want you to stay close."

"Oh," Elle muttered. She turned her head towards the floor, but Alex could still see her lips curve into a smile. "Well, I need to freshen up anyways," she continued, "I won't be far."

Alex pulled his eyes away from the clippings on the wall, his gaze gripping onto her and reluctant to let go.

"Don't be long," he finally spoke with hesitant words. He watched as her shadow crossed the wall in the hallway and left his sight, a deep sigh leaving his lips and trying to carry some of his apprehension with it.

She'll be fine, he thought. But he wasn't quite convinced.

Alex forced his attention back on the newspaper articles covering the walls, part of him sure that those creatures couldn't possibly exist in the same world as Elle.

His eyes glanced over the clippings, only stopping to read the headlines. They started as bold, front page stories, then quickly shrunk to articles of little interest that one found in the back pages of the paper.

The first clipping was from the hometown paper, reading boldly, "**SHERIFF'S SON ABDUCTED IN LAKESIDE**".

He walked down the line, coming across another clipping from a newspaper in Silent Hill, dated a few months later, "**SHEPHERD'S GLEN CHILD PRESUMED DEAD**".

The last clipping Alex looked at was titled, "**SHERIFF ACCUSES SILENT HILL POLICE OF CORRUPTION**".

Centered on the wall just before his father's desk was a large map, but he quickly recognized that it wasn't Shepherd's Glen. It was a map of Silent Hill, various places circled or underlined in red marker with random notes scrawled in his father's handwriting. Alex pulled the map off the wall and folded it up, then slid it into his duffel.

His father's desk was surprisingly clean considering the scattered display all across the walls and windows. Alex searched through the drawers, but found nothing of interest, until he came to a large locked drawer at the bottom of the desk. He pulled out a large ring of keys from one of the other drawers, but none of them were for the locked desk, so he unsheathed his knife and tried to jimmy the lock. The lock was stubborn and Alex had to wedge the blade into the lip of the drawer until he finally pried it open.

Inside was a bulky brown file that held several smaller files within it. Most of the smaller files were professionally labeled, apparently taken from the Sheriff's official files, but a few were labeled in his father's own handwriting.

The file labels read:

**Shepherd, Joshua**

**Shepherd-Sunderland, Mary**

**Silent Hill, Cold Cases**

**Silent Hill, Cult Activity**

**Silent Hill, Missing Persons**

**Sullivan, Walter**

**Sunderland, James**

**Wish House Orphanage**

Alex skimmed through the various files, mostly focusing on his father's own notes. He paid more attention to Josh's file than the others, where he found a note written by his father in bold, confident letters, "**THEY TOOK HIM**".

His eyes quickly grew weary of the words in those files and he looked away, muttering to himself, "Jesus Christ." Then he began to wonder how long it'd been since Elle left.

"Elle?" Alex called as he stepped into the dim hallway. The hollow echo of his own words seemed to ripple through the halls for a lifetime as the anxiety slowly squeezed the blood from his heart.

"_Yeah! Just gimme a minute!"_ she finally called back.

He sighed and relief came flooding back into his lungs.

Alex pulled the key ring from his father's desk and unlocked a door next to the office. He stepped into a small storage room with a bulky metal gun locker that was as close to an armory as Shepherd's Glen had.

He opened the double doors to the locker to reveal a slim selection of firearms. Four 9mm handguns, three pump-action shotguns, and a single bolt-action rifle. Alex considered one of the shotguns, but realized how difficult it would be to fire with only one arm, so he only took one of the handguns and a box of 9mm ammunition. Even though there were no .45 caliber weapons in that locker, he also found a box of ammunition for his 1911.

Alex turned away from the gun locker and found some other useful supplies in the room. He grabbed a pair of bolt cutters, some emergency road flares, a long black flashlight, and extra batteries. When he looked through the batteries, he remembered the toy walkie-talkie and pulled it out.

After turning the knobs a few times, he realized the batteries were dead and replaced them. He felt silly carrying it around, but he couldn't forget hearing Josh's voice over it. Even if that was just in a nightmare.

Alex searched through the rest of the room, finding a few boxes of bottled water and humanitarian rations. He recognized the yellow packaged MRE's immediately. _"Hum-rats"_ was what they called them. His unit used to pass them out along with soccer balls to try to win "hearts and minds". They never seemed to have much sway on the local opinion.

"Red Cross left those," Elle spoke, her silhouette suddenly propped in the doorway. "There was a forest fire a while back. Left some people without homes, so they stayed in the highschool for a while. The main meals aren't that great, but they got Pop-Tarts in them."

Alex didn't quite hear what she said as his attention was completely drawn to his eyes, looking upon what could've passed as a picture of Elle from highschool. She'd apparently washed her hair, which hung down to her shoulders in glistening gold strands. He didn't even have to stand next to her to catch the sweet sent of her shampoo.

She'd also taken her jacket off, only wearing that scarlet tank-top. The revealed flesh was so white that Alex felt as though he wasn't supposed to see it.

"What?" she asked with a smile and feigned innocence, her fingers sweeping back a few strands of moist hair behind her ear.

"Nothing," Alex said, forcing his eyes to look away.

"You know, I was gonna wash my hair anyways, so don't think I'm getting all dolled up for you," she said, her smile growing with each word that crossed her lips.

Alex silently picked up a few bottles of water and humanitarian rations, loading them into his duffel as he tried to stare at her through the corner of his eye. Then, his radio suddenly came to life.

"—_eler, come in. Elle —swer yo— damn radio!"_

"Crap," Elle suddenly blurted as the smile disappeared and she rushed out into the hallway.

Alex stood by himself for a moment, surprised that the toy radio would pick up the frequency. But then he realized a small town sheriff's department probably wouldn't have radios with encryption or channel hopping. And he also realized that even though he could hear them, his toy radio wasn't strong enough to send a transmission.

He stepped into the hallway and followed Elle's voice until he came into the lock-up. There were only six cells, three on each side, and Elle was standing in one that appeared to be where she slept.

She had a black police radio to her mouth, speaking, "Hello? Wheeler?"

"_Why di— you answe—?"_ Wheeler's voice came in broken through lines of static, but Alex could see that Elle understood his words from the way she rolled her eyes.

"You know why," she spoke to Wheeler, managing to transmit her eye roll through her tone.

"—_ave to tape tha— –adio_ _to your hand?"_

"I'm sorry I didn't keep you up-to-date on the whole lotta nothin' going on back here."

Elle looked up to see Alex standing just outside her cell, then spoke before Wheeler had a chance to lecture her.

"Oh, crap, actually something did happen. Guess who I found?"

"—_lett?"_

"What? Alex. _Alex_ is here," she spoke, her tone rising in excitement as she said it aloud.

"—_n't co— –ver."_

"Wheeler? I didn't get that. I said _Alex is here!"_

But Wheeler was muffled by a steady stream of static.

As Elle tried to get through to Wheeler over the radio, Alex's eyes looked over the bars before Elle's open jail cell.

She examined the radio as a confused look grew on her face.

"Um – bye, er – over and out and – _whatever." _She tossed the radio back on her rack, then looked at the watch on her wrist. "Shoot, now my watch is broken. What ti–" she suddenly gasped in the middle of her sentence as the cell door crashed shut behind her.

"I'm sorry," Alex spoke from the other side of the bars, Elle's eyes looking at him questioningly. Her gaze drifted down to his hand. He'd propped an empty magazine in one of the chest pockets of his jacket and was sliding 9mm rounds into it.

"What're you doing?" she asked in unsure words that approached him cautiously.

Alex didn't respond, but continued loading the magazine.

"Um – could you open the door, please? There's a bunch of levers on the wall over there. They're not electric or anything, so just pull the one for this cell."

As he finished loading the last bullet into the magazine, Alex looked up to her with a serious gaze.

"Just listen to me, okay?" he began to speak. "I know you're gonna think I'm crazy, but really _listen_ to me."

"You're scaring me Alex," she said with a nervous smile, hoping for a punch line.

"Good."

His blunt statement wiped the uneasy smile from her face and Elle started to adopt his serious tone while Alex loaded the full magazine into the 9mm pistol he'd taken from the gun locker.

"Okay – Alex, I'm starting to get pissed off and I _really_ don't won't to be mad at you. So just let me out of here, alright?"

"No. It's too dangerous, Elle."

"What? I told you, there's nobody else here."

"Do you know how to fire one of these?" Alex asked as he inspected the gun in the dim light.

"No, why – _look_, just open the door. _Please."_

"There's something out there. I didn't want to believe it at first – thought they were hallucinations or –" he suddenly trailed off, drifting away in his thoughts before finally blurting out, "But they're real."

"No, Alex, there isn't anything out there," she started to speak compassionately. "I – I don't know what happened to you over there, but I'm telling you there really isn't _anything_ out there."

"I know, crazy veteran, right?"

"No – _no no no._ That's not what I meant," Elle spoke frantically, almost pleading to him now. "I think you're just – _confused_ by the situation. And I understand. I was too. But there's nothing out there. Just open the door, okay?"

Alex held the 9mm pistol into the light for Elle to see, pointing to it as best he could with his prosthetic as he spoke, "Look, there's a full magazine right now. That's fifteen shots. Just flip the switch up here, that's the safety, and squeeze the trigger. Remember, _squeeze_, don't pull. If you pull, you anticipate the shot and your body jerks, throwing your aim off."

"Why are you telling me this?"

"Trust me, even at this range, you can miss." Alex struggled to pull back the slide with his one hand, grunting as he did so, but managed to feed a round into the chamber.

He handed the pistol to Elle and warned, "Careful, there's a round in the chamber."

Elle looked at the gun with disbelief, then suddenly became angry and refused, "No."

"Take the gun."

"_No,_ Alex."

"Damn it – Elle, will you just take it please?"

"I don't want it."

He stuck his hand through the bars and thrust the gun towards her.

"Come on, just humor me, okay? You don't have to hold it. Just stick it in the corner or something."

"I _don't _want it, Alex," she spit at him, forcing him to pull back a little. Then he tried to force the gun into her hand, but she swatted it away with an anger that warned him not to try it again. So he set the gun down at the base of the bars, within her reach.

"I wish I could take you with me, I really do. But it's not safe out there. So just wait here, sit tight, and try to get Wheeler on the radio. Okay? He's gotta be coming back soon anyways."

Elle shook her head angrily, responding, "No. I'm not gonna _sit tight_. You're gonna open the damn door and let me out of here."

"I know you think I'm crazy right now. But I _promise _you, there is something in that fog."

"No there isn't!"

"_Yes, _there is! I don't know what they are – I guess – _monsters."_

Elle gasped in disbelief and uttered, "_Alex –"_

"_I know!_" he snapped. "I feel stupid using that word, but – there really isn't any other word. Just think about everything that's been going on in this town so far. The roads just end, everyone's disappeared, but what _I'm_ telling you is crazy?"

"Yes! It's fucking insane! Alex, if I saw a two headed dog, I wouldn't start thinking – _the world was flat!"_

"I hope it is insane. I really do. I hope I've just lost my fucking mind, because that means you're safe and you never have to see the things I have."

Elle's anger suddenly subsided and her face sank into worried concern. She reached through the bars and cradled Alex's hand into her own.

"Just talk to me, okay?" she pleaded. "I don't know what you've seen, but I want to. I wanna know what happened to you."

Alex looked into her sympathetic eyes, seeing nothing but pity, and then glared down at her hands before pulling away from her grasp. Her jaw drooped open and he could almost see her wince from his reaction.

"Don't – don't do that. Don't look at me like that – like I just fought my way out of a straight jacket," he said in a cold, subdued anger.

"_No_," she gasped.

"Don't _pity_ me. I don't want that – not from you."

"_No!"_ she cried in a quivering voice, stomping her foot on the ground in a desperate frustration that was starting to brim at the bottom of her eyes in the form of tears. "_That's not what I mean!_ I just want to understand. I want you to talk to me. Can you just talk to me Alex? Please?"

Alex turned his eyes away from Elle, her tears making his decision even harder. He locked his eyes on the end of the long hallway, upon the front doors, and spoke as if he were standing just before that entrance far away from her.

"I have to help Mister Bartlett. I owe Joey that much. I can't just leave him out there like that. With those _things_ out there."

He started to step towards the hallway, his thoughts pleading for her to let him go. But she wouldn't.

"Alex wait! The generator!"

He stopped, knowing he shouldn't, and looked back in her direction.

"It's almost out of gas," she continued. "Wheeler was supposed to get some more gas out on his patrol. It could go out any second. You can't just leave me here – not in the dark."

Alex stared into her tear slicked eyes, desperately wanting to stay with her, but knowing he had to help Mr Bartlett. He forced his eyes downward, away from her gaze so he could think clearly.

"No, Alex, _look at me._ Look me in the eyes."

His eyes trembled, jumping like a dog at the end of a leash, and he reluctantly let them run back to Elle.

"Just wait. Wait until Wheeler gets back," she spoke, the moisture of her eyes turning them a deeper shade of blue.

He reached into his duffel and pulled out the black flashlight he'd taken from the storage room, then handed it to her.

But she refused the offer, almost crying, "_No_, I don't want a flashlight! _I want you!_ I want you to stay with me!"

"Elle," he began to speak, his voice cracking, "I have to go."

"No you don't," she spoke with a sudden, quiet confidence, stretching her arms out to him through the bars. "You wanna stay with me. That's what you want."

Alex looked at her reluctantly, then slowly reached out until her hands clasped around his. A relieved smile burst across her face as she pulled his hand closer to her and placed his palm across her soft, warm cheek.

"Just stay. Nothing else matters. Stay here. With me."

He let his fingers linger, soaking up the warmth of her flesh, then pulled her hands to him and lightly kissed them.

"I'll be right back," he spoke as reassuringly as he could, the words immediately triggering her hands to clamp tightly around his. "I _promise."_

"_No, please don't go Alex._ Don't leave me alone."

"I promise you Elle, I'm coming right back. I just have to do this one thing, and I'll come straight back to you."

"No, you're not leaving me," she started to demand. He tried to pull his hand away, but she refused to let go. The tears were streaming from her eyes freely now and he noticed the smudged black makeup tracing their path.

She'd put on makeup. For him.

Alex forced his eyes shut so he couldn't linger on that painful image of her, wincing as he did so. He started to pull harder at his arm, trying to free himself from her fingers, which sealed around his hand like a vice.

"You're safer here," he pleaded.

"You promised me Alex!"

He finally freed his hand, the sudden absence of resistance throwing him against the bars of the cell opposite to hers. He didn't dare look at her, but spoke quickly before he left.

"If anything happens – use the radio. I can hear you, but I can't respond."

As he rushed himself into the hallway and made his way to the front doors of the station, Elle's voice shadowed him, a mixture of pleas and curses.

"_Alex! You promised!"_

"I'll be back for you," he whispered to himself as he stepped out of the building and into the fog.


	10. Whispers

— **Whispers**** —**

_Author's Note__: You may notice a very peculiar format in this chapter. It's simply there to distinguish Alex's thoughts from his spoken words, as I commonly use italics for music lyrics and when a character is singing. Hope it isn't confusing, distracting, or look too sloppy. __I'm more than willing to listen to any alternatives anyone has to offer._

* * *

It's funny how you can remember meaningless little details leading up to something, but the moment itself is just a haze. It was the last summer I spent in Shepherd's Glen, when I took Josh to the Lakeside Amusement Park. My father was planning Josh's first hunting trip that weekend, which I wasn't invited to.

Maybe I was a little jealous, but I was mostly afraid I'd lose my little brother. My father was already trying to turn him against me, thinking I was some kind of bad influence on his good little soldier. I just wanted Josh to have some fun, the kind of fun he'd never get with my father. I just wanted him to be a kid, and to see that not everything my father told him was the truth.

I remember telling him to wait for me outside the bathroom. I couldn't have been more than a minute. But when I came out, Josh wasn't there. He was just gone. The only thing left was the Robbie the Rabbit doll I'd won for him.

I've pretty much always known what happened to my brother, even if I didn't like thinking about it. It was the same thing that happens in about every case when a child goes missing in a public place. An "abduction" they called it. But my father, I don't know what he believed. Christ, I don't know what he's made himself believe.

All those files I read in his office, it seems like he thinks some cult took Josh. Maybe to sacrifice him to some god, maybe to make Josh one of their own. I don't think the "why" really matters to him. He just wanted to put a face to the person that took my brother. He just wanted a "who". My father didn't go to Silent Hill to find my brother. He went there to find someone to blame, I guess because I didn't stay around to take it.

— — — — —

The cold slithered across Alex's skin, reminding him of the heavy dread of loneliness sinking in his stomach. He stood before the Sheriff's station near the bulletin board, caught in a no-man's land between two impulses. One urged him towards the cemetery, the other pushed him back to Elle.

He finally became tired of rushing from one side to the other and sat down on the wall where he sat with Elle earlier, the missing faces on the bulletin board following him with their dead eyes.

"She's safer in there," he spoke aloud, hoping the logic in his decision would somehow find more meaning in spoken words. But his thoughts of Elle melted together and formed a voice within his head, countering his own words.

**_You just left the only person that hasn't forgotten about you._**

"I don't know what I'll come across. I can't take that risk. Not with her."

Alex pulled the empty magazine out of his Colt 1911, setting it in his jacket pocket and starting to feed it bullets as he had done with the 9mm pistol.

**_She's the only person that still gives a shit about you. You just locked her in a jail cell and left her alone for the sake of a man who's probably better off dead._**

"I owe it to Joey."

**_You don't owe him shit. Joey made his own choices._**

Alex tried to ignore the voice, focusing on the ammunition clip he was filling with .45 caliber bullets.

Just like led PEZ, he thought to himself with a smile.

**_You enjoy the loneliness, don't you?_**

"She hasn't seen those things," he answered aloud, releasing his thoughts into the real world to give them more weight than the nagging echo in his mind. "Maybe I'm the only one who can, or maybe they're just drawn to me. Either way, she's better off in there by herself than out here with me."

**_No. You've grown used to this idea of you being alone in the world. You've embraced it, and now you'll do anything to keep it._**

Alex's fingers suddenly stopped as his head tilted away from the half-filled magazine, his focus draining into his ears as they picked up a low rumble in the distance. The generator.

He wondered how much gas was left in it. Maybe he should fill it up before he left.

But Alex shook his head hard, scattering that notion into a million harmless pieces. The cemetery was so close. He could be back with Mr Bartlett in minutes. His fingers plucked the next bullet out of the box of ammunition and slid it into the ammo clip.

**_You love the idea. Why is that? Some leftover teenage angst?_**

"_I can't remember anything,"_ his lips started to sing softly, trying to drown the lingering voice in his head. _"Can't tell if this is true or dream."_

**_What is it Alex? Self-pity or self-fulfilling prophecy?_**

"_Deep down inside I feel to scream. This terrible silence stops me."_

**_And what about Wheeler? Curtis? Your mom?_**

"_Now that the war is through with me, I'm waking up I can not see."_

**_You gonna go save them all? While Elle waits in that cell by herself?_**

"_That there's not much left of me, nothing is real but pain now," _he continued to sing, his head trying to shake that voice away.

**_You've only seen those things when you're alone. How can you be so sure she won't see them? All alone in that jail cell, nowhere to run._**

"_Hold my breath as I wish for death. Oh please God, wake me."_

**_Where you left her._**

Alex loaded the last round into the magazine and tossed the box of ammunition back in his duffel. He pulled the ammo clip out of his jacket pocket and held it before the metal jaws of his prosthetic, bending his left elbow until the shiny three-fingered claw clamped around the magazine.

"_Back in the womb it's much too real,"_ he continued, _"In pumps life that I must feel."_

**_You really want to be alone, Alex?_**

Alex suddenly stopped singing as he reached for his handgun and the moment his fingers left the ammunition clip, it slipped from the grasp of his prosthetic and hit the ground.

**_Just swallow that barrel. One twitch of the finger and you'll be alone forever._**

He stood with a silent brooding that tensed his chest and stiffened his back. His eyes paced between the magazine on the ground and the prosthetic poking from his sleeve. A thousand thoughts mobbed in his head, slowly muffling that voice as they scratched across his skull for a way out. But the voice managed to say one last thing before it disappeared into a haze of a thousand incoherent thoughts.

**_Just like Joey._**

And all at once, those thoughts simultaneously found an escape and a single voice as Alex suddenly screamed with a rage that quickly stormed into the remnants of his left arm and brutally smashed the plastic prosthetic against the wall.

"Useless piece of _shit!" _he screamed as he swung the prosthetic arm against the bricks. Despite his rage, part of Alex was still reluctant in those first few swings, almost expecting to feel pain in that plastic extension of his arm. But as he found this notion to be untrue with each succeeding swing, he became more violent towards the false arm.

"You're not mine!" He paused in between a series of swings to pull and tug at the prosthetic with his right hand, trying to rip it out of the jacket sleeve.

"I don't want you!" he screamed at it, finding the buckles holding it in place stronger than he expected.

Alex suddenly spun around, facing the bulletin board, and back-handed the sturdy wooden posts holding it up as if turning his anger towards those missing people. And then he did just that.

His hand clawed at the posters and tore them down, flinging them aside into the fog as his lips spewed random profanities that seemed to have no specific target, but were just ventilating fumes of his anger.

Alex's fury slowly dwindled as exhaustion set in with aches and pains shadowing it. And then it came to a complete halt as his eyes settled on one of the remaining faces posted to that bulletin board.

He gazed at the flier Elle had posted of herself, reading the words she wrote upon it, hearing them within his head spoken in her voice, "Have you seen me?"

"This is stupid," Alex spoke to himself between pants of breath as he looked back to the entrance to the Sheriff's station. But as his legs started to move in that direction, a gust of wind suddenly kicked up.

It seemed like Alex's rage had become a separate entity, pushing through the mist in furious circles as it lifted the torn Missing Persons posters off the ground. One of the posters blew into Alex's chest and hugged him tight, seeking safety from the surging wind.

But as he peeled the piece of paper from his chest, he saw that it wasn't a Missing Persons flier. It was a child's crayon drawing.

It showed Robbie the Rabbit, even more anthropomorphic than usual, slumped over on what looked like a park bench. His eyes were just as bulging as usual and traces of red were scratched down his mouth.

Below the picture were words scrawled in a child's dyslexic style:

* * *

**_W_h_y w_on_ R_o_b_b_ie W_a_keU_p?**

* * *

"Josh," Alex uttered as he looked over the picture. But just as the image was burning into his thoughts, the wind snatched the paper from his fingers and carried it down the road in the direction of the cemetery.

Without a conflicting thought left in his mind, Alex grabbed his duffel from the ground, picked up the filled magazine, and followed the wind towards the Rose Heights Cemetery.

He adjusted his dislocated prosthetic on the move, finally popping it back into position, and wedged the magazine for his 1911 just below his left armpit. Alex pulled out his firearm and slid the tip of the ammo clip into the open mouth of the magazine chamber, then quickly slapped the bottom of the clip against his chest before it could slide out and thrust it into the handgun until it clicked into place.

As he forced back the slide with one hand to feed a round into the chamber, the gusts of wind returned and dropped a piece of paper in his path. Alex picked it up, finding it was one of Josh's drawings, but not the one he had held only moments before.

This one was titled:

* * *

**_G_i_Rl _n S_c_a_R_l_et_ _D_Re_s_s**

* * *

It was a stick figure wearing a red triangle, the layers of red crayon on it so thick that it almost looked three-dimensional. The figure had long scratches of black hair, and its face had an angry scowl with a second sad expression drawn over it, as if Josh couldn't make up his mind on how she felt.

Below the drawing of the girl in the scarlet dress was more jumbled letters reading:

* * *

**_s_h_e_ _M_a_k_es _M_e _c_R_y_**

* * *

Alex's eyes suddenly jumped above the picture and looked ahead as his ears picked up a faint sound in the distance. He saw the outline of a figure running across the street, the details obscured by the fog like a smoke screen.

The drawing floated from his fingers as he released it and pulled out his gun, aiming in on the silhouette. But as he flipped the safety off, his eyes started to recognize the shape as human. Not just human, but a child.

"Hey! _Stop!"_ he called out as he lowered his gun sites and started to run after the child cloaked in gray mist.

"_Wait!"_ Alex broke into a sprint, quickly making up the distance between him and the child. Josh's name rose from his lungs, but his eyes got a closer glimpse of the child and that name suddenly stopped at the peak of his throat, a formless cry departing his lips.

It wasn't Josh. It was a girl, her dark hair flowing behind her like a cape. But as Alex stumbled upon this revelation, she seemed to gain speed and was suddenly swallowed up by the fog.

Alex's legs just pumped harder, their strides recklessly trying to gain ground as he pursued the smack of her bare feet into the parking lot of the Rose Heights Cemetery.

He started to call out to the vanishing girl, "_Just wait a sec–_" but his teeth suddenly bit down on those words when he fell and his skull crashed upon the cement.

A flash of red jolted before his eyes, followed by an absolute darkness that slowly ascended back into dull gray. Alex laid upon the ground in a daze, the blow to his head jarring a random memory loose. He could hear familiar words crackling from a radio.

"_Caretaker this is Checkmate Four-Niner, over."_

He stared into the fog with glazed eyes, his mind wiped clean of any thoughts and his brain feeling as though it were sloshing around within a pool of water, gradually sinking and settling to the bottom.

"_What's your Sit-Rep, over?"_

"Fucked up beyond all recognition," Alex answered the memory aloud, his spoken words as sobering as smelling salts and driving the last buzz of confusion from his head. He looked back towards his legs and found them caught within a random spool of razor wire, laid out across the entrance to the cemetery.

He gently moved his legs to try to free them from the tangled mess of wire as his palm attempted to massage the pain from his head. But with the movement of his legs, the razor teeth sunk deeper into his jeans until they scraped the surface of his flesh. A panic rippled across his skin that made the hairs stand up to attention and Alex's legs suddenly kicked with the reckless fury of a stampede, digging themselves deeper into those bushes of razor wire.

"Relax. You're _here_, not _there_," he spoke to himself, calming the muscles of his legs until they went limp. Then he slowly and gracefully plucked one razor at a time from his jeans until he finally freed both legs.

Alex swayed a little as he stood up, his dazed brain still lingering behind the rest of him. He looked ahead, deeper into the cemetery, but couldn't see the little girl anywhere. With the pain still buzzing in his head, he began to wonder if he'd really seen a girl at all, but then his eyes came across something on the path before him.

It was a faint shade of blood, shaped into a partial foot print.

She must've cut her feet on the wire, he thought.

He found her red footprints became more distinct the further he wandered down the path into the cemetery. Alex pulled out his 1911 and instinctively dropped into a CQB stance, his knees bent and his upper body slouched forward, creating a good balance as well as making himself a smaller target. He aimed his weapon forward, holding his prosthetic horizontally in front of him to rest his hand on for a steadier aim.

It seemed very quiet as Alex put more focus into his ears, listening for the sounds of shuffling feet. Or the buzz of a fly's wings. He kept his eyes forward over the sites of his firearm, only briefly glimpsing to the ground to follow the trail of footprints. They led him through the maze of mausoleums and head stones, gradually transforming from red footprints to circular splashes of blood.

The trail led him right to the front gates of the Bartlett family plot. Alex looked around nervously, searching for signs of the creature he encountered earlier. But the only thing reminding him of what had happened were the uneasy sensations flowing from his memories.

Alex's eyes fixed onto the padlock sealing the gate to the Bartlett family plot and a brief smile rose on his face. He took it as evidence that he made the right decision. Something wanted him to find Mr Bartlett. But his smile quickly sunk as he contemplated over whether that was a pro or a con towards his choice.

He aimed in on the padlock, but stopped just as his finger tightened around the trigger.

"You have bolt cutters dumb ass," he spoke as he lowered his weapon and un-slung his duffel. He fished out the bolt cutters he'd taken from the Sheriff's station and spread the handles until they formed a V-shape. After wedging the lock in the mouth of the bolt cutters, he propped the left handle against the rod-iron gate as he pressed the right handle inwards with his hand.

It was easier than he expected. The lock gave little resistance. Alex dropped the cutters back into his bag and pulled the severed lock off the gate, then threw it as hard as he could over the cemetery walls.

His limbs jolted from the squeal of the gate, unprepared for the sudden break in the silence. He stepped into the Bartlett family plot, but quickly stopped as his eyes found the trail.

"What the fuck?" he spoke in a mixture of apprehension and anger. Alex found the blood trail had become an overflowing scarlet puddle sliding down the steps leading into the Bartlett mausoleum. He quickly pulled out his pistol and aimed in on the entrance to the tomb, then slowly crept towards it.

Alex had the foresight to switch on his flashlight as he approached the burial chamber. When he came close to the dark entrance, he angled along it, making sure there wasn't anything waiting for him inside. His eyes hesitantly darted between the dark interior and the slick crimson steps, then he finally stepped into the pool of blood and into the mausoleum.

It was nearly impossible to tell where the blood led or originated from as it was painted all across the cement floor. But Alex's eyes focused on a large stone sarcophagus at the other end of the tomb. He couldn't see any engraving on it, and he started to wonder if it was meant for Joey. A reserved grave.

He stepped closer and immersed the stone coffin in the beam of his flashlight, noticing the red liquid oozing down its surface. Then a thought entered his mind and he lowered his head.

"I'm sorry Joey," he spoke, already confident of what he'd find in that coffin. Alex never knew Mr Bartlett very well, but he always seemed like a nice man. Definitely a better father than his own.

Alex raised the sleeve of his right arm just enough to get a glimpse of the broken watch around his wrist.

"I can still give him this," he spoke, then stepped towards the stone coffin. It was sealed by a large slab of marble and when Alex put his hand on the edge, he noticed the blood was seeping through the slit where the stone met the marble. He grimaced slightly, then started pushing all his weight and strength against the slab until it started to slide off.

The blood seemed to act as a lubricant and the marble top slid off easier than expected, falling with a loud crash into the crack between the sarcophagus and the mausoleum wall. But when Alex shined his flashlight into the stone coffin, he didn't find what he expected.

"What in the hell?" He reached his hand inside and pulled out a small porcelain doll, holding it by its matted black hair. When he noticed the scarlet stained dress it wore, he suddenly dropped it and backed away. And then he heard her voice, garbled over the toy walkie-talkie muffled in his pocket.

"—_ex — —ator ou– — — —ark, I th— — —hing here."_

His hand frantically scrambled for the radio and pulled it out, pressing the speaker against his ear.

"_Ple— — — —ack — — — —ared. Somethi— — — — — — hear it — — —"_.

"Elle?" he spoke into his radio, even though he knew it wouldn't reach her. "Are you alright?"

No answer.

"Elle, it's Alex. Can you hear me?" Just silence. "I'm coming straight back, okay? Just hold on."

Alex waited one more moment, but even the static was quiet. He dropped the radio back in his pocket and moved towards the exit out of the mausoleum, but suddenly stopped when he felt an odd sensation in his chest.

It felt like a tremble, as though his heart had shivered. His legs suddenly became weak, their energy quickly evaporating as the pain in his head grew sharper. Louder.

His knees finally buckled under their own weakness and he fell to the floor, the blood seeping through the fabric of his jeans. He felt his heart shiver again as his ears heard the siren winding up into a piercing scream.

"_No,"_ he cried desperately, trying to will himself back onto his feet. But the pain just grew sharper and deeper in his head. As the darkness gathered and the world changed around him, the only thought he could hold onto was Elle, alone.

"_God damn it – not now!"_ Alex hollered with a strength he saved for her, a strength that lifted him back on his feet. But just as he took his first step, his legs collapsed and he fell back to the ground. The fall stirred up the pain congested between his skull and he screamed as the sirens echoed through his ears.

And then it all just became an echo. The pain, the sirens, Shepherd's Glen. They were all just a passing thought in Alex's mind.

He stood up and stroked his flashlight across the interior of the mausoleum. The entrance was gone. He was surrounded by nothing but walls now.

"_Fuck!"_ he screamed, the echo having nowhere else to go and piercing his ears, twisting his expression into a wince. But he could feel a breeze, carrying a damp musty odor with it. He turned towards its direction, finding himself facing the open stone coffin.

He peered over the side, shining his light within the sarcophagus, finding that the flashlight couldn't touch the bottom.

"No, fuck that!" he cried. "You can't keep me from Elle."

He turned back to where the exit should've been, then rushed at the wall that stood there and drove the sole of his boot into it, screaming, "_You can't keep me from her!"_

But the force of his kick simply ricocheted off the sturdy wall and hit Alex, throwing him off balance. He stumbled backwards and fell against the stone coffin.

Before he could steady himself, he suddenly felt something grip his right jacket sleeve and tighten around his arm. A sudden wave of terror quaked through his body, but he couldn't pull his arm away. It started to drag him into the open coffin.

The beam of Alex's flashlight danced across the walls as he blindly struggled with whatever had a hold on him. His left arm was useless and he started to tip over the edge. He tried to grab onto something, but had nothing to grab with, so he fell into the coffin.

Alex slipped into the darkness, falling, until it felt as though he was just floating in nothingness.


	11. You're Not Here

— **You're Not Here**** —**

* * *

There are two elements to a war story: the truth and bullshit. No matter how much bullshit you gotta wade through, you can always find a small bit of truth hidden beneath it. To tell a good war story, you need to find a balance between the two, and that balance usually all depends on your audience. You don't want to tell your friends and family back home a story with too much truth.

For example, there's the story on how I got a promotion from PFC to Corporal and picked up a team leader billet. But the story isn't about me, that's just incidental. It's about my former team leader Sergeant Nash and how he got relieved of duty.

We were doing security on a convoy headed into a green zone, one of those rear-echelon bases with Internet cafes and KBR chow halls. When we pulled into town, there was this little boy who walked up to our truck with a weird looking smile. It was a very forced smile, but that was usually the kind we saw, so no one thought anything of it. Next thing you know, his smile goes away and his hand comes out, a grenade gripped in it like a baseball. Then he tossed it in the back of the truck with us.

As I later heard Sgt Nash telling the story, "The fuckin' dumb ass forgot to pull the pin." When they'd ask him what he did, he always replied with a smile, "The fuck you think I did? Showed the little prick how to use it and gave it back to him." It would usually take his listeners a few seconds to understand what he meant by that, then he'd laugh. I don't think he was laughing at the story, but their reaction to it.

That's a bad war story to tell civilians, because there isn't enough bullshit in it. Bullshit lets you know how you're supposed to feel. It comes with prepackaged emotions. But if you're listening to some soldier's tale and you don't know whether to laugh, cry, or just walk away, then you probably heard a true story.

— — — — —

Alex stood across from her, only a few steps separating him from Elle. He was silent, staring at her with the eyes of a newborn laying sight upon the first thing encountered outside the womb. She stood shivering, his field jacket wrapped around her. Her wet hair clumped together as if huddling to share their warmth, but he could still see her gaze beneath those dripping yellow tangles.

Her gleaming grayish blue eyes looked like puddles of water, their currents so deep that he felt himself being pulled down into the undertow. Her face was a blank canvas, waiting for the fever burning behind those eyes to simmer to the surface.

"I'm cold," Elle spoke in a simple daze. She began to step towards him, her legs gracefully and methodically striding through the frigid water consuming their feet.

The water was raining from the ceiling and slithering down the walls of the jail cell, gathering into a pool across the floor that was steadily rising. The LCD screen of a small radio glowed from just beneath the surface, bobbing around aimlessly. Alex could hear the music playing from its speakers clearly,

"_I fell out of Heaven _

_to be with you in Hell."_

He didn't question how they were brought together in this moment as his mind was consumed with the image of Elle approaching him, her body swaying with movements that seemed to be borrowed from a dream.

"_My sin's not quite seven, _

_nothing much to tell."_

The water dripping from the ceiling had soaked through his cloths and swallowed his skin, confusing his body into thinking it was submerged beneath that cold water. She stopped only inches away from him, close enough for her warm breath to caress his face, her gaze locked onto his eyes and burning a path straight into the pit of his stomach.

"_Lust I have and crave,_

_a saintly boy I'm not."_

Elle's eyes left his and followed her fingers crawling down his arm, caressing his flesh slowly as though to savor the taste. Alex's breath shivered as it left his lips, the heat from her touch quickly dissipating into the cold air. His lungs started to burn, unable to inhale as her fingers branded their touch into his skin.

"_I take it to my grave,_

_beside it cursed I'll rot."_

"You're so warm," she spoke, taking another step closer and pressing her soft body against his. "I can't even breath," Elle continued as her fingers wrapped around his hand and guided it to the small of her back, encouraging him to pull her even closer, as though she wouldn't be satisfied until they shared the same flesh. But Alex just stood there, his senses overwhelmed with Elle, his fingers sinking into her skin.

"_I'll ride these roads alone,_

_beneath the sulphur sky._

_Everywhere I roam,_

_life's one big lie."_

"Elle," he spoke almost in a whisper, her name a miscarriage of his lips, not sure if it was meant to be a question or a yearning.

Her eyes seemed to change color, melting into the purest form of sapphire-blue, as her mouth arched upwards into a crescent smile. She leaned towards his ear, her wet hair licking his face as she pressed her cheek against his.

"_When the fireball goes down,_

_out by LA way,_

_I come into town,_

_but only for a day."_

"I love how you say my name," she whispered, her hot breath tickling his ear. The heat of her words became trapped in his head and stirred his thoughts into a swarm.

She pulled her lips away from his ear, enticing his skin with the tip of her nose as it followed the curve of his face until their noses were side-by-side. Alex could feel the shadow of her lips shrouding his own, inhaling as she exhaled, exhaling as she inhaled, passing a single breath between them.

"_Starving on my knees,_

_I pray for you to understand."_

"Aren't you gonna fall in love with me?" he heard Elle ask. He tried to speak, but he couldn't find the air to carry those words, so they lingered within his lungs, burning with anticipation.

Her eyes hovered so closely to his that he couldn't focus on them. They were just blue blurs. He could hear his jacket sliding off her shoulders as her arms reached behind his neck. Then the blue blurs vanished when she closed her eyes and her lips interlocked with his, the grooves joining like the two halves of a single mold.

"_A man sure is weak,_

_but lust holds my hand."_

Elle's mouth enveloped his bottom lip, her teeth sinking into the thin flesh until they drew blood. She tugged at Alex's lip, suckling upon it until it seemed to be bled dry, and finally released it. Her own lips were painted a vivid shade of red, heavy heated breaths puffing between them.

Alex could feel his lungs collapsing, pleading for air to fill the shrinking void as their panic simmered upwards and flushed his face. Elle's chest heaved heavily, her lungs swallowing every breath around them to keep up with her quaking heart, which Alex could feel pulsing against his chest.

"_I struggle and I cried,_

_I pounced with no avail."_

Her fingers slid through his slick hair and she leaned her forehead against his. Her gaze towered above him, penetrating his eyes, and she let it sink in before she gasped with a smile.

"Hey," Elle greeted him breathlessly from her giddy smile, her palm swiping across her face and slicking back her wet hair. Alex's eyes watched the beads of water following the texture of her face, expecting them to evaporate into mist from the heat he felt from her skin.

"I want your warmth," she continued, the words panting. Her hands clasped behind his neck and pulled down with all the weight of her body as her legs wrapped around his waist.

"_Least I never lied_

_or did the truth derail."_

His legs stumbled with the sudden weight added to them and he fell against the wall, the heavy perspiration of the bricks soaking into his shirt. His hands instinctively cupped under her thighs to hold her up and a sultry laugh left her crimson lips, pleased that he was taking part.

"I wanna feel it inside me," Elle moaned with an aroused impatience gyrating through her voice, her hips slowly following in rhythm. The moisture drizzling down her face bridged the slender gap between their skin and teetered on the curve of his upper lip. The heavy bangs of her moist hair draped around him as she leaned down and her tongue licked the perspiration from his lip.

This is a dream, he thought.

"Don't wake up," she answered. Before he could ask himself how she heard, her mouth sealed over his lips as a longing moan echoed in her throat with a hunger that could never be nourished. His eyes drifted away, still in disbelief that this was happening, and he noticed their shadows cast upon the wall of the cell.

It didn't seem to be a true reflection of the moment, but a violent mockery, perhaps distorted by the continuous currents of water flowing down the wall. Elle's shadow was an indescribable shape, its head vibrating with impossible movements as it seemed to maul the face of his shadow.

Before Alex's eyes could acknowledge the perverse image as anything more than a glimpse, Elle's fingers crept down his face and shut his eyes for him, as if to tell him to just enjoy the moment. He could taste her warm tongue as it parted his lips and wriggled into his mouth.

Elle's free hand moved down his arm as the other remained hooked around his neck to support her. Her fingers wrapped around one of his hands and guided it up her torso, beneath her tank top, giving him permission to explore her body.

The heat surrounding their bodies like an aura became unbearable, as though they were being consumed by fire. But Alex felt it mostly beneath his skin, his lungs desperately screaming for air. Elle's thighs tightened around his waist and squeezed the last breath from his lungs, which her lips eagerly swallowed. He felt as though she were sucking the life out of him.

Then Alex opened his eyes.

His body awoke before his mind did, stirred by his burning lungs. His limbs thrashed through the water wildly, clawing for the surface. Every muscle in his back tensed until his head peaked from the surface and his gaping mouth sucked in the air with a loud gasp.

The musty air had a euphoric taste, flooding his blood with endorphins as his lungs ravenously consumed every breath it had missed. Alex soon realized he wasn't in that jail cell with Elle, but the scorched ruins of a hotel he didn't recognize. The only thing he did recognize was that he wasn't in Shepherd's Glen anymore.


	12. Halls of the Crimson King

— **Halls of the Crimson King —**

_Author's Note__: Whenever I use a song in this story, I'll usually have a link in my profile where you can actually listen to it. __And I apologize for the slow progress of this story. It usually takes me a while to finish a chapter, but this one was unusually hard to write. Frankly, I fucking hate this chapter, but I'm not sure if that's based on the quality of the end result or simply how long it took me to get there. Either way, it's done now, and I can happily move on with the rest of the story._

* * *

War isn't exciting. War isn't Hell. War is boring. Every Pogue has a routine, a daily schedule, quotas, a clear goal and purpose. But the Infantry is just waiting for your moment, and when that moment comes, it's over before you even realize it's arrived. The curse of the modern Grunt is downtime. Endless, eternal downtime.

The military machine is always idling on the factory default setting of "Hurry up and wait". There is no alcohol. There are no prostitutes. Bob Hope doesn't come in a helicopter filled with Playboy Bunnies. There's just you. Masturbation becomes a necessity. Maxim and FHM become good literature. Bootleg DVDs are fine cinema. And _Halo_ is just good training. The walls of the porta-johns become chat rooms and blogs, posted with ongoing series like "Ninja Facts".

Ninja Fact #36 - all ninja grow up to be killed by Chuck Norris.

I just about lost my mind those first six months. The worst was when our patrols were cancelled because of Ramadan. I had nothing but time to get to know my thoughts. And too much time thinking can drive a man insane. I thought of Josh, I thought of my parents, I thought of Shepherd's Glen, and I thought of Elle. I think Elle was the worst because she started showing up in my dreams. She was always there, lying right next to me, waiting. But there was nothing I could do. I could never touch her, no matter how much I wanted to. No matter how much she wanted to. She was on the other side of the world, lying right next to me.

— — — — —

It was just a dream. But phantom feelings of Elle's body still buzzed across his skin, keeping him warm in the frigid womb of cold water.

Alex pulled himself out of the water, which rose almost a foot high in what looked to be the hallway of an old hotel. What remained of the wallpaper was peeling. The rest appeared to have been consumed in a fire from long ago, dark shadows of ash still lingering across the rotting, dilapidated walls. Alex saw an old hallway rug covered in mold and fungus bobbing to the surface of the water, woken by his presence.

His eyes jumped up when he heard a loud boom rippling through the ceiling. The crashes from the floor above caused paint chips to rain down. The flakes of paint were moist with humidity and stuck to Alex's jacket in gooey chunks. He wiped the wet flakes from his cloths and his eyes continued to follow the loud noises quaking through the ceiling. The rhythm of the sounds suggested foot steps, but he couldn't imagine what would have such heavy feet.

The footsteps traversed down the hallway and slowly faded into an echo as they appeared to turn the corner. Alex looked down to the flood water of the hallway, watching the ripples of those footsteps still shivering across the surface. He noticed a quivering reflection of what looked to be the silhouette of a man. When he looked up, he saw someone standing before him in the hallway.

He didn't need a second glance to recognize that shape. He parted his lips and "Father" stood at the edge of his tongue, but he brushed it aside and called out, "Dad?" But the title felt unnatural to Alex and his lips spoke it with apprehension, as if asking Alex if he was sure he wanted to go with that name.

His father didn't acknowledge him, his back turned towards Alex.

Alex reached for his father's shoulder, but his outstretched fingers collapsed when they crashed into a glass pane separating him and his father. He shook the pain from his hand and knocked on the glass with his prosthetic claw, but his father still didn't respond. As Alex's eyes and fingertips explored the cracks and blemishes of the glass, he realized it was actually a large mirror reflecting a world that no longer existed.

His father, Adam, was wearing his olive-drab field jacket and the wrinkles across his skin were still in their infancy. He stood in the same hallway as Alex, but its burns were still fresh and its floors dry. Adam looked at a small yellow note pad cradled in his palm and voyaged down the hallway, turning towards the first room on his right. But before he stepped into that room, he looked back towards Alex as if he knew his son were there all along.

In that brief moment when their eyes met, Alex's face flushed and he felt as though he were a child again, knowing he was in trouble without knowing why. He found himself holding up his prosthetic arm as a defense against his father's gaze, offering his injury as a proper penance for his sins.

When Adam disappeared into the room, Alex turned away from the mirror in the direction of the room his father had entered. He found a door whose numbers had fallen off, but their outline read "108" within the shadows of the fire that had ravaged the hotel.

At the base of the door, Alex noticed a scrap of paper sailing across the water on the ripples echoing from his foot steps. It was a piece of yellow paper from a pocket sized notepad. He quickly recognized his father's handwriting and read:

_- honeymooned in Lakeview Hotel_

_- Lakeview burned down. Ruins still there_

_- stayed in room 312_

At the bottom of the page were more notes written in different color ink, probably at a different time:

_- Sect of the Holy Woman_

_- Sect of the Holy Mother_

_- Sect of Valtiel (?)_

_- Sect of the Holy Vessel_

"_Lost Memories: The Untold History of Silent Hill" - H. Mason_

Alex turned the paper over, but found someone else's handwriting on the back:

_The accused sees false reflections_

_of the serpent consumed by the eternal ring._

_He tries to shed his hollow sins_

_in the halls of the Crimson King._

_The lost child follows the piper's tune._

_The sirens harshly sing._

_He wanders alone in search of home_

_in the halls of the Crimson King._

_The bereaved sacrifices a legacy for a future_

_and what he hopes it will bring._

_But he will only find its end_

_in the halls of the Crimson King._

After reading the strange poem, Alex came to realize the handwriting was his own, although he knew he never wrote a word of it. He dismissed it as the least of his worries and stuffed the scrap of paper in his jacket pocket, not caring that the pocket was lined with moisture.

He pushed against the door to room 108, but the water was pushing back. After driving his shoulder into it, the door finally opened, but there wasn't a room waiting behind it. Alex stood at the border of the open doorway and at the edge of darkness. He turned on his flashlight, but it had been saturated with flood water and the weak beam of light could barely scratch through the surface of the blackness before him.

It was a slender hallway that could've stretched for eternity. He took a few steps forward to reach further with his light, but it couldn't find the end of that hall. Alex noticed that his shoulders nearly bridged the narrow gap between the walls, which were lined by shimmering mirrors.

For a brief moment, he thought his flashlight was getting brighter, but then his heart missed a beat and began swelling with excess blood when he realized that the light behind him had vanished. Alex spun around towards the doorway, but only found a brick wall that stood as though it was supposed to be there.

He listened to the scratches of his prosthetic claw against the surface of the wall, echoing in the narrow darkness. He felt the rough bumps of the bricks scouring his fingertips and pulling at his fingernails. Alex patted the wall and slammed his palm against it, then threw the weight of his shoulder into it, but realized that was a mistake before he even made impact.

He finally turned around, looking for an answer in the darkness looming ahead of him. It only made him feel as though he were laying at the bottom of a deep grave, twisting his stomach with a strange fear that was stuck between claustrophobia and agoraphobia, making him feel he was being smothered by emptiness.

Alex looked towards his reflection in the mirror to the right, wanting to see himself just for the assurance that he still existed. But there was something off about the reflection that drove his eyes back for a second look. It looked more like a portrait of himself, motionless with trailing eyes. He raised an arm in the air, but the reflection just glared at him.

He finally looked away and dropped his duffel on the ground. Alex reached inside and pulled out one of the road flares. But as he looked at the flare curiously in his only hand, he wondered how the hell he was going to ignite it.

The flint was on a cap covering the tip of the flare. He tried holding the flare with his prosthetic while driving the flint against it with his good hand, but the flare kept slipping from his metallic grasp. Finally, he decided to wedge the cap between his teeth and hesitantly pushed the tip of the flare against the flint. He let out a quick exhale of air and struck the flare against the cap, only producing a few sparks.

Alex sifted a swear through his clenched teeth and pressed the flare back up against the cap, then violently drove it across the flint. The flare suddenly ignited and Alex spit the cap out of his mouth as though it had been ignited too. He squinted from the sudden burst of red light and looked away from the tip of the flare, leading his eyes towards his reflection in the mirror just as something crashed against it from the other side and sent cracks through its surface.

"_Jesus!"_ Alex gasped as the flare slipped from his hand and splashed into the water. The red light cast the ripples of the water across the hallway, slithering fluidly over the walls. His eyes focused on the cracks in the mirror, then looked past them towards his reflection. He noticed a cut in his forehead and blood trickling down towards his eyes. But when Alex's hand explored the contours of his face, he couldn't find a cut or blood. Then his reflection drove its forehead into the mirror, giving birth to a new web of cracks that quickly assimilated with the rest.

"Where's Josh?" the reflection suddenly spoke mockingly. When it drove its head into the mirror again, Alex's knees collapsed and he fell into the water, his hand quickly grasping for his handgun and aiming in on the reflection.

"_Where's Josh?"_ it hollered with a roar of laughter as the blood traced the curves and outlines of its face. And as if a switch was flipped, its grinning expression suddenly collapsed into a gaunt, grim glare.

The weight of Alex's fall jostled the flare and it bobbed in the water, superimposing his shadow over his double almost perfectly. His reflection suddenly seemed very pale with glassy grey eyes, a fog swirling beneath the pupils.

"I too have been touched by the crimson one," the reflection spoke in a dry, brittle voice that Alex didn't recognize as his own. "A callus on the left hand."

His heart started to pump harder, expecting him to run at any moment. But there was nowhere to run.

"But when I saw the face of God, I was changed." The reflection held out its amputated left arm and made a sawing motion with its right hand, continuing, "And I took the entire hand off."

Alex just sat huddled in the water, looking up at his own reflection through the sites of his handgun. His vision flashed in and out, as though it were a television with a bad reception. His heart crawled up between his ears and throbbed against his skull, reminding him it was ready to move.

Alex pushed his back against the wall opposite of his reflection, keeping his weapon aimed on it as he pushed himself back up on his feet. But as he did so, a flash of dizziness erupted behind his eyes. His chest began to tighten around his heart and he hunched over for breath, suddenly not concerned with the man in the mirror.

The back of his neck started to burn as if someone had brushed it with sand paper and his skin alternated between flashes of hot and cold. He could feel cold beads of sweat swelling in every pore across his flesh.

Alex turned away from his reflection and put his hand against the opposite wall to keep himself balanced as he struggled to straighten his wobbling knees. He then remembered there were two mirrors and reluctantly looked up to the one he was leaning against. But he didn't his reflection. He saw Elle's.

Her face was shrouded beneath her unusually long blond hair, which hung heavy with moisture. He noticed slight trembles in those strands of hair, pushed by her heavy exhales of breath. His eyes followed her arm and found her hand pressed against the other side of the mirror, just opposite his own as though they were reflecting one another.

She leaned her head towards him, the tip of her nose just barely peaking out from between the strands of hair.

She whispered, "In a glass coffin I wait for him. When I say his name, he goes away. So I don't say his name. In his dreams I long to see, a chance between two worlds, a scarlet girl whispers to me. But he doesn't want me to know, so I don't listen."

He just gazed at her, her whispers still scratching his ears, his thoughts grinding against each other as they tried to contemplate this reality. His heart felt as though it was absorbing blood like a sponge, expanding so it could blossom violently from his chest. His arm started to go numb as his blood grew thick, and then his hand slipped. As he fell towards the ground, Alex blacked out, but the water quickly woke him.

He barely had the strength to lift his head above the water. Bile singed his throat as it surged upwards and burst from his lips, settling in the water around his head. Alex didn't even care, simply pulling his legs into his chest and curling into a fetal position, struggling just to breath a single breath.

Alex looked up towards the two reflections staring down at him. He reached with a trembling hand that didn't want to voyage out on its own and picked up the flare, then tossed it down the hallway. He simply didn't want to see those people in the mirror anymore. He wanted the darkness to swallow him.

But when he looked in the direction of the flare, he saw the end of the hall. A feeling of relief flooded his body with euphoria and allowed him that single breath. His body slowly started to relax, but he was still too weak to stand up, so he hooked his arm through the strap of his duffel and dragged it through the water as he crawled to the end of the hallway.

The reflections followed step by step, their eyes locked on him. Alex tried to ignore them in the corners of his eyes and focused on the bright red flame of the flare. As he got closer, his panic attack slowly subsided and he was finally able to pick himself back up on his feet.

But he nearly collapsed again when he reached the other end of the hall and found another brick wall. This one had a painting hanging on it, which showed a menacing owl perched in a tree staring out towards the viewer. Beneath the painting was its title:

_Lilim Is Watching_

He looked around the wall, hoping to find some key or clue on how he would get out of that hallway, finding a cryptic message written across the bricks under the picture:

_Her house sinks down to death,  
And her course leads to the shades.  
All who go to her cannot return  
And find again the paths of life._

Beyond the message, Alex found two flaps of mirror hanging on hinges, flanking the brick wall like shutters. He closed the flaps over the brick wall, which fit together perfectly to form a new section of mirror that joined the other two.

The reflections of Alex and Elle left their individual sides and joined each other in the new mirror covering the brick wall. Without hesitation, they embraced in a moment that reflected the dream Alex had earlier. Elle wrapped her legs around the waist of Alex's reflection and her long hair consumed them both.

Their bodies ceased to exist separately and melted into one, forming a single entity that gradually morphed into a tree of black bark and cancerous limbs. Alex slowly backed away as the tree grew beyond the confines of the mirror. The impression of the tree pushed through the surface of the mirror in a series of cracks and Alex lifted up his duffel to shield himself just before the mirror exploded into a cloud of shrapnel.

When he lowered his duffel, he saw the tree before him, oozing with something that looked more like puss than sap. Its black bark groaned and throbbed, as if it were breathing. Alex noticed a source of light beyond the road flare, pouring in from an arch just at the base of the tree, resting between its gnarled roots. He knelt down and looked through the hole, just large enough to crawl through, and saw the hotel hallway at the other end.

Alex got on his elbows and knees and wormed his way through the hole, hooking one of his legs through the carrying strap of his duffel and dragging it behind him. When he reached the hallway of the hotel, he laid on the dry floor and just let himself breath. He grabbed his medication from his bag, which was in a waterproof bottle, and took a generous dosage to prevent a resurrection of his anxiety.

After a while, he looked around the hall and noticed the "2" in front of every room number. He must've somehow ended up on the second floor. And with that thought, he stood up and drew his gun, remembering those loud footsteps he heard earlier.

The faint sound of music grazed his ears, coming from somewhere beyond the end of the hallway. Alex's boots followed the musty carpet down the hall, each step echoed by a cloud of dust and ash. But as he progressed through the hallway, he noticed the doors to the succeeding rooms were replaced with thick sheets of glass.

He stopped at the first one, trying to look in, but there was nothing to see. As dim as the light was in the hallway, the darkness behind that glass was so thick that Alex could only see his own reflection across its surface. He noticed a subtle hiss of static coming from the toy radio in his pocket and looked at the bottom of the glass pane to read an engraving:

_Are you sure what side of the glass you're on?_

He moved on to the next room, finding the inside lit with a lonely yellow bulb dangling from a wire. An M-16 rifle was leaning against the glass, its ejection port cover open and a single used brass casing resting on the floor near it. A Kevlar helmet with a faded desert camouflage cover was resting on the barrel.

Beneath the dim light was a lone man sitting at a table with a plate and an excessively large knife, eating something. The light was too dim for Alex to make out the features of that man's face. He knocked on the glass, but the man didn't seem to notice. When his eyes looked back towards the Kevlar, Alex noticed a name tape sewn to the back of the faded cover that read "BARTLETT".

"_Joey!" _Alex called out as he pounded on the glass, but Joey didn't respond. His jaw just moved up and down, looking like a cow chewing on its cud with glazed eyes. Alex kicked the glass, but it was far too thick for him to make any difference. He took a few steps back and aimed his handgun at the upper corner of the glass, then fired a single round.

The bullet barely even scuffed the glass. Alex watched Joey for a response as the ringing in his ears gradually faded into the emptiness of the hallway. When Joey started to move, Alex started pounding on the glass to keep his attention. But Joey merely swallowed what was in his mouth and gripped the large knife on the table with his right hand.

Joey pulled his left arm from out of the shadow of the table and set it down near the plate, revealing that his left hand had been cut off at the joint, the wound still glistening with blood. As he set the knife against a section of the remaining arm and began to blossom the flesh with the blade, Alex turned away, breathing heavily.

"That's not him. He's dead," Alex consoled himself, ignoring a part of his mind that dared him to look back. He looked at the watch around his right wrist, the hands stuck on 9:43, to remind himself of Joey's fate.

He walked towards the music and away from that room, not even letting it enter the corner of his eye to give his mind the leeway to pretend it was never there.

But as he turned a corner in the hall, he suddenly heard a moan behind him. A female moan. Alex turned around towards a dark glass face in front of yet another room, wondering if that moan was from pleasure or pain. He told himself to keep walking, but the feminine nature of that cry made him think of Elle. He aimed in on the glass with his handgun and flashlight, but the weak light refused to enter that darkness and reflected off the glass face as a glimmer in his eyes.

The darkness suddenly gave birth to a pair of hands that struck the glass, the impact marked by a squeal of feedback from Alex's radio. The fingers were facing the floor and the palms were red, looking as though the flesh had deteriorated into pulp and left a shadow of film to mark where they'd been. And then an image materialized from the shadows, a woman floating in the air with her back to the ground as though someone were holding her just beyond the reach of the light.

Her palms slid down the glass as she arched her back, tilting her head to see him. Her scalp was matted with filth and what hair remained hung like the broken threads of a spider's web. From what Alex could see, the entire front of her body was as red as her palms, slick with congealed flesh like that of a festering wound.

There were no features on her face, only the impression of those features pushing from beneath a sheet of flesh. Except for her eyes. But the lids didn't look natural, more like someone had hastily cut through the skin and sewn it back up, leaving only a tiny opening to frame her black pupils.

As Alex backed away from the glass and the hiss of the radio slowly faded into subtle white noise, the woman suddenly retreated into the darkness, lifting her upper torso back into the shadows as though she were doing a sit-up. His feet stepping backwards, Alex's eyes refused to leave that darkness, partly because the weren't convinced she was gone and the other part a morbid curiosity to see the rest of her.

But his eyes quickly lost interest when the entire hallway trembled at the bass of a groan behind that dark glass. Alex's head turned back and forth between the glass and a set of double doors behind him, caught in a no-man's land between flight-or-fight. His heart grew louder, pleading for flight.

A huge mass of flesh crashed into the glass, its weight rippling through the surface in cracks. The mass of flesh was too large for the dim light to reveal and it withdrew back into the darkness, preparing for another charge. Alex briefly looked over the intricate web of cracks in that thick glass, lowered his weapon, and ran through the double doors leading out of the hallway.

He found himself in another section of hallway with another set of doors ahead of him. But as he ran towards those doors, he stopped when the music became clearer. It was coming from the staircase to his left, leading towards the third floor. The fog of adrenaline and fear put a hiatus on his thoughts and he simply followed the music like a lost child.

Even when he reached the third floor, Alex could still feel the tremors of the creature downstairs. His ears led his eyes to the source of the music, coming from a room right in front of him. And then Alex entered room 312.


	13. The Bride

— **The Bride**** —**

_Author's Note__:__ I don't really know the intricate differences between the Army and the Marine Corps, particularly when it comes to lingo, boot camp experience, etc. So I'm pretty much just going with a combination of guess work and my own experience. If any Army vets are reading this, I'm more than happy to hear any corrections._

_And thank you to anyone whose still bothering to follow this story, despite my extreme periods of procrastination. You're far better readers than I deserve._

* * *

They told me I'd been unconscious for three days. I don't know if that was from the concussion or if they just kept me under the whole time. Maybe a bit of both.

When I woke up, I was in a hospital bed in Germany. The first thing I saw was the nurse, her silhouette glowing from the light in the ceiling. All I could make out was the blond hair. I remember thinking that it was Elle. I must of asked her if she was an angel, because she laughed and said something about a "Valkyrie".

Then I saw my arm. She didn't seem much like an angel after that.

She was just a nurse. But she was there when I woke up. Anger isn't a discriminating or patient thing. They ended up putting me under and I had to wake up to it all over again, hoping that maybe the first time had just been a dream.

I never did ask them what they did with my arm. I doubt they just keep leftover pieces of a person in a jar in the basement. But there's just something odd about thinking that a piece of me is in a landfill somewhere on the other side of the world.

— — — — —

The atmosphere changed so drastically when he stepped into room 312 that Alex just stood in a daze, feeling as though he had walked into another reality. The honeymoon suite was in pristine condition, untouched by the nightmares that had ravaged the rest of the building. It was oblivious to the reality the rest of the hotel had succumbed to, existing on a separate plane of its own.

On the opposite side of the room was a green chair before an antique television built within a decorative frame. Atop the television was a record player, its needle rising and dipping along the path of vinyl grooves that generated the kind of music Alex expected to hear in the clothing section of a mall, or in the elevator.

White noise hissed and popped beneath the current of the music, originating from the television, whose screen glowed with a snowstorm of static. The glow flashed and pulsed across the walls like a white digital fire.

Alex's footsteps were marked by the muffled creaks of the antique wooden floors beneath the carpet as he crossed the room. He noticed a VCR resting on the floor next to the television, loose wires running into the back of it, apparently not a basic item included with the suite. His eyes followed the spinning letters printed across the record, reading, "LOVE IS BLUE".

When he reached for the record player to turn it off, he suddenly heard a voice to his right, stirring his eyes towards it with his handgun shadowing them.

"Love is blue. Not white or yellow or green. Desire is red, hate is gray, but love is blue."

He saw a small sitting area with a couch and coffee table. There sat a woman in a wedding dress, every bit of her body cloaked in virginal white. Alex couldn't see her eyes behind the thick veil shrouding her face, but he could feel her gaze.

"When she touches you, what color do you feel?"

He hesitantly lowered his firearm to the floor, studying the woman with his eyes. She could've just as easily been a mannequin. Her posture was very stiff, not a single twitch of her body rippling through the white fabric of her dress, as though she were permanently stuck in that pose.

"Stop looking at me," the Bride spoke. "I can't keep my composure with you gawking at me."

Alex turned his eyes away, settling on the spinning record while keeping the woman in the corner of his eye.

"Who are you?" he asked.

"I can't remember. I've been waiting so long – nothing else exists anymore. But the music helps remind me – of the feelings – the colors."

"What're you waiting for?"

"Someone. I don't remember – but I remember the colors. Blue – sometimes gray, though I don't know why. But I do know it's not you, so why are you here?"

"I don't know. I'm lost."

"Maybe you're looking for someone. The father?"

Alex turned to her, asking, "What father?"

But his eyes quickly shied away when the Bride suddenly slammed her palms on the coffee table.

"_Stop looking at me!"_ she hissed. "I don't know who you are, but I know that isn't your right. I don't belong to your eyes."

From her outburst, the static pouring from the television speakers suddenly spiked into a squeal and echoed through his radio before settling back into its constant stream. His fingers tightened around the pistol grip of his M1911 as he waited for the mood in the room to settle as well.

"I don't know who he is," the Bride finally spoke. "He's waiting for someone too, he just doesn't know it. He's fooled himself into thinking they never left. He wants to believe it so much, he doesn't recognize what he's let into his home."

"Where is he?"

"If you can help me remember, then I can tell you."

"Is his name Mister Bartlett?"

"No, I need reminders – mementoes. Something to stir the colors inside me and remind me why they're there."

"What mementoes?" he asked.

"If I remembered what they were, then I wouldn't need the reminder, would I?"

Alex sighed. "Then how do you expect me to find them?"

"Look behind the door."

"Which door?"

"The one behind the bed."

Alex turned to the queen sized bed in the corner of the room, only finding a wall resting behind it.

Before he could speak, the Bride said, "It's behind the wallpaper."

Alex started to turn his eyes toward her, but quickly stopped when he recalled her previous outburst and settled with her in his peripheral vision, asking, "Why couldn't you go through this door?"

"I don't like that door. It has bad colors. I don't want to know why."

Alex let his duffel slide from his shoulder and onto the floor, then started moving the bed away from the wall.

"Mind the noise," the Bride scolded in a controlled tone. "The people in this hotel have wandering imaginations. I'd be mortified to think of what conclusions they'd draw from that racket you're making."

After moving the bed, he knocked on the wall until he found a spot that rattled beneath the reverberations of his knuckles, then unsheathed his knife and cut a long vertical slit into the wallpaper. Behind the shredded paper was his own reflection, trapped within another mirror. He waved his hand about, scrutinizing the mimicked motions of that reflection closely, finally pressing his palm against the surface of the mirror. When he pulled his hand away, he heard a click and the mirror swung outwards on hinges, revealing a dark doorway.

After slinging his bag, he stepped cautiously through the doorway in the wall with his handgun drawn. His first step across the threshold landed on tarnished metal grating in a narrow hall. Alex stood still for a moment, adjusting to yet another drastic change of the atmosphere, drawing this new world around him into his eyes.

He found himself once more in the industrial wasteland, standing on a narrow platform of metal that twisted on an upwards path, spiraling around a large, solid metal cylinder and encased within an even larger cylinder. It was like someone drilled a corkscrew into a metal slug. He looked up and down through the metal grating, unable to see a beginning or an end to the spiraling path. Even the light seemed to be tarnished with rust.

The tower of Babel, he thought to himself.

Strewn along the path were doorways. As far as Alex could tell, they may have numbered to infinity.

He walked up the narrow path towards the nearest door. The door had a slick metal surface with a tiny viewing window in its center, something that may have belonged in an asylum or prison. He gazed through the viewing window and saw a hallway beyond it. He soon recognized that hallway as the second story of his childhood home.

Alex opened the door to see if that image from the viewing glass was really behind it, but soon found himself no longer standing outside the door. He was back in his parents' home, wandering down the upstairs hallway.

His body moved without his permission. He had no control over it. He was merely an observer from within himself. Random thoughts wormed into his mind, telling him he had to return a movie to the video store. As his eyes turned to his left hand and read the time off the watch wrapped around his wrist, Alex realized he'd stepped into a memory.

Alex's legs carried him towards the den at the end of the hall, but he stopped before the door when he heard the voice of his father.

"Do you know what this is?"

The door was cracked open and his eyes crept towards that opening, finding his father in the den holding a dark stained wooden case, opened and displaying something for Josh.

"A gun," Josh spoke.

"A handgun. This is a Colt -M- nineteen-eleven, made of pure silver."

"Can I hold it?"

"If your fingers are clean and you don't drop it."

Josh's tiny hands pulled the glistening weapon from its case, its gleam reflecting off his envious eyes. He twisted the handgun around, admiring every detail of it, not paying attention to where the barrel was pointing.

"Hey," their father spoke sternly, "What'd I teach about weapon's safety?"

Josh thought for a moment, then carefully pointed the barrel towards the floor as he answered, "Never aim at anything you don't intend to shoot."

"That's right. You've got to always be aware of where that barrel's pointing, even if it's not loaded."

Their father gently took the weapon from Josh's hand, replacing it in the case, then knelt down next to Josh.

"This was your grandfather's. His men spent their own money to have it made just for him."

Josh continued to gawk at the weapon in its display case, his lips mouthing "Wow."

"That's what's important. It doesn't matter how many medals you may get, it's the respect and love of the men under your command that matters. They'll always respect the rank, but you have to earn their respect for yourself. And your grandfather did that in the Chosin Reservoir."

Josh pointed to something on the weapon and asked, "What's that mean?"

"That's our family crest. I had that added when I got back from Vietnam and your grandfather passed it on to me. And one day, when you become the man I know you can be, I'll pass it on to you."

"Really?"

"If you earn it. That's what this represents. The strength and honor of our family. That potential's in you, you just have to work hard to bring it out."

"Cool."

"But you have to promise me never to tell Alex about this. It's just between you and me. Promise?"

"Yes sir."

Their father stood up, smiling, and ruffled Josh's hair, speaking, "That's my good little soldier. I'll show you some of grandfather's medals from the war."

Alex waited until they disappeared up the stairs to the attic, then crept into the den with light footsteps and pulled a tape from the VCR.

The light suddenly faded into a dismal shade of brown and he found himself back standing before that metal door. Alex looked down and found a VHS tape in his right hand, no label on it. He wondered if this was one of the mementoes he was supposed to find and slid it into the inner pocket of his jacket.

Before ascending to the next door, he pulled out his handgun and studied it under the light. The silver was starting to tarnish. He remembered tossing that handgun into Toluca Lake just before he'd left Shepherd's Glen. How it returned to his family was a question that didn't even concern him anymore. He slid it back in his pocket and continued on.

He heard the sounds of unseen machinery, belching and breathing in a constant rhythm. A sharp metal squeal pierced his ears from far beneath his feet. He looked down through the gaps in the metal grating, but couldn't see anything on the spiraling levels below.

Alex came before the next door and peered through the viewing glass, seeing a cork board covered in pictures of young women behind it. He didn't recognize it, but figured a picture might be one of the other reminders he needed for the Bride.

After taking a deep breath, Alex opened the door.

Every muscle in his body was exhausted, twitching and quivering in defiance to every move he made. A perpetual flow of sweat shimmered across his skin. He felt every slight disturbance in the air slither across his shaved head.

Alex saw a small, blackened Q-tip pinched between his fingers, digging it into the corners of a meticulously cleaned window to pick up every bit of dust and grime that was wedged in there. He caught a glimpse of his awkwardly skinny reflection in that window, noticing the gray Army PT shirt.

His body suddenly froze when he heard the bellow of Drill Sergeant Huller echoing across the squad bay, "School circle right fucking now!"

Alex scrambled between the racks and rushed towards the front of the squad bay where Drill Sergeant Huller stood, a flood of other recruits following the same path as Huller loudly counted down from ten.

He sat down crossed-legged before Drill Sergeant Huller as did the other recruits in his platoon, forming a semi-circle around Huller. When Huller reached the end of his countdown, he bellowed like an air horn, "_Zero!"_

Huller suddenly shot his arm out and pointed his finger at something behind them, his fingers snapping with the intensity of a rifle crack.

"_That means you stop moving you nasty fucking thing!"_ Huller screamed. _"Who the fuck is that?"_

"Private Abernathy, Drill Sergeant!"

"Abernathy! Always fucking Abernathy! I don't know why the fuck it takes you more than ten seconds to get you limp dick up here!"

"Yes Drill Sergeant!"

"Yes _what?_ Did I ask you a fucking question dumb ass? _Get the fuck up here right now Abernathy!"_

"Yes Drill Sergeant!"

Abernathy ran with heavy breaths to the front of the squad bay and started to sit down when Huller yelled at him, "_Up here, dip shit!" _Huller emphasized the location with sharp jabs of his stiff finger towards the floor behind him.

"Mountain climbers, right fucking now," Huller commanded. Abernathy dropped to the floor and started performing the exercise, counting off the repetitions loudly, to which Huller responded viciously, "_Shut up! Shut the fuck up! _Did I say count off? Did I fucking order you to count off?"

"No Drill Sergeant!"

"I called a school circle shit head! Do you think I wanna hear your voice?"

"No Drill Sergeant!" Abernathy yelled, stopping the exercise as he did so.

Huller rushed towards him and bent down until he was face to face with Abernathy, stabbing the brim of his Smokey the Bear hat into Abernathy's forehead as he screamed, _"I don't know why you're stopping! I don't know why in the fuck you're stopping!"_

Abernathy quickly resumed his punishment, his legs pumping like pistons.

Huller stepped back up before the circle of recruits, looking back briefly at Abernathy to say, "The only goddamned thing I wanna hear from you is sweat."

Huller then turned his attention to another recruit in the corner near the exit, who was dressed in full utility uniform and sitting on his duffel bag, preparing to depart the platoon.

"Private Curtis, get the fuck up here," Huller commanded. Private Curtis stood up and jogged towards them, taking a position next to Drill Sergeant Huller.

Huller looked him over and shook his head in disgust, then looked over the circle of recruits as he pulled out a picture from the breast pocket of his blouse, holding it up for them to see as he spoke, "Someone tell me what this is."

"A picture, Drill Sergeant," one recruit answered.

"No fucking shit. How many waivers your recruiter have to sign to get you here, dumb ass? What the fuck is it a picture _of?"_

No one answered, doubting any words that might've come out their mouths. Huller finally looked to Private Curtis and ordered, "Tell me what this is Private Curtis."

"My girlf– my ex-girlfriend, Drill Sergeant."

"Wrong. This is a piece of pussy. This ain't a fucking woman, it ain't a fucking female, and it ain't a fucking goddamned girlfriend. It's a piece of nasty ass fucking pussy. And I swear to God, any of you pathetic little shits _ever _kill yourself over a piece of pussy, I will follow you into the depths of Hell to stick a fucking boot up your ass. You fucking understand?"

"Yes Drill Sergeant", the recruits yelled.

"No, really."

"Yes Drill Sergeant!"

"You better sound the fuck off."

"_Yes Drill Sergeant!"_

Alex felt a jolt of panic travel across his skin when Huller met his eyes.

"Shepherd, get the fuck up here."

Alex jumped to the position of attention and responded, "Yes Drill Sergeant."

"Do the honors," Huller spoke as he handed the picture to Alex. "Add this cunt to the wall of shame."

Alex took the picture and walked towards a cork board covered in photos next to the entrance to the shower room.

Darkness descended around him until the picture in his hand was barely visible. Alex looked around, finding he'd returned to the path outside the door, then examined the picture more. It almost looked like Elle, but the face was obscured by long bangs of blond hair. Just like the reflection of her he'd seen earlier.

He wasn't sure how this picture would serve as a reminder for the Bride, but stuck it in his pocket anyway and moved on.

As he ascended towards the next door, Alex stopped when he thought he heard something beneath the sounds of mechanical breathing. It sounded like laughter, maybe of a child. He looked down past his feet through the metal grating. A subdued hiss of static buzzed from his radio.

"Josh?" he called out, but was only answered by his own echoes. Then he felt something touch the back of his leg and spun around, but saw nothing. His quick movement caused his duffel to swing around and bump him on the same spot at the back of his leg. Alex looked down at the bag, for a brief moment relieved, until he saw the canvas quiver from movement within it.

His body convulsed and twitched as though he just spotted an insect on his back and he dropped the bag, backing away and watching it through the sites of his firearm. His eyes stuck to the duffel, trying to discriminate his blood fueled imagination from reality. The surface of the bag rippled with life. Something was in it.

Alex's finger tightened around the trigger of his handgun until it squeezed a flash of gunfire from the barrel. He winced as the shot exploded in his ears and left a high pitched ring that was gradually buried beneath the sounds of the industrial nightmare around him. The spent .45 brass casing bounced off the wall and landed in the collar of his jacket. Alex instinctively dropped the handgun and lunged his fingers towards the hot cylinder of metal as it singed its likeness into the flesh of his neck. He plucked the hot shell out from his collar and threw it down the path, hearing it chime as it skipped across the grating.

The muzzle flash burnt into his vision and he blinked and rubbed his eyes until it faded away. Then he picked up the handgun, but didn't aim in on the bag. It'd stopped moving.

He carefully propped up the bag and opened the top, waiting a moment before he looked inside, expecting something to fly out. Alex un-clipped his flashlight and cast its beam down into the bag, then hesitantly followed with his eyes.

He saw nothing unusual inside, but then caught a glimmer off the crazed eyes of Robbie the Rabbit. He dove his hand quickly into the bag, gripping the stuffed animal by the ears, and yanked it out of his duffel. A blackened hole from the gunshot was scorched through the doll's stomach.

His eyes watched a small trickle of blood ooze from the hole and he gripped the doll by its body to get a closer look, but immediately felt writhing beneath the doll's fur. When pale white maggots started dripping from the gunshot wound, he threw the stuffed animal in disgust.

"_God damn it",_ he moaned, trying to shake the sensation from his hand. He saw Robbie the Rabbit quivering as a small gusher of maggots flowed from its stomach.

Alex looked in his duffel again, shaking the contents around to make sure there weren't any maggots or any other surprises inside, then picked it up and moved towards the next door.

He stood before the door reluctantly, wanting to head back to room 312, but then sighed and spoke aloud, "One more."

Through the looking glass, he found a highschool locker, the sight causing the apprehension in his stomach to quickly evaporate and leave his lips in another sigh. Then he opened the door.

His nose was filled with the imbalanced stench of sweaty socks, fruity perfume, overbearing deodorant, sickly-sweet BO, and the burnt rubber of soles scraping against the hallway floor. The sound of a hundred voices fought for dominance in his ears, blending into a gray murmur of indistinct words. Alex's eyes briefly drifted away from his locker and noticed the various mobs of students gathered in the middle of the hallway as others struggled to get by.

He opened his locker and unloaded a handful of books, then dumped another load into the limp olive-drab Alice pack slung over his shoulder. Just as he was about to shut the locker, he heard a voice that filled him with unbearable ecstasy.

"Hey." Alex looked past the locker door and saw Elle with a smile that spread through her whole face. She stroked her fingers across her temple and pushed her long, highlighted blond bangs behind her ear. He noticed a small sparkle around her eyes from glitter makeup.

"What's up?" he spoke, trying to drown the nervous cracks of his voice in a casual tone.

"Not much. Get your pictures today?"

"Yeah – just like everyone else in the school. I wasn't an exception."

Elle smiled and shook her head, speaking, "Such a dick. I'm trying to build a conversation and you just shoot me down."

"Well, you haven't been picking up the hints, so – you know."

"Yeah." She just stared at him for a moment, smiling, then widened her eyes and asked, "Well?"

"Well – what?"

"Let's see the pictures."

"Um ..."

Elle quickly jumped on his hesitation with playful mockery, "Um ... um ... stalling ... um ..."

An awkward smile cracked from his lips and she lightly nudged his shoulder.

"Come on. Can't look any worse than you do now."

"Thank you – that's such an awesome thing for you to say. Appreciate it."

"It was awesome, wasn't it? I'm just so awesome today."

A gust of laughter passed from his mouth as he reached into his backpack and pulled out one of his school photos. Elle quickly snatched if from his fingers with an expectant grin and gazed at it.

"Awwww," she spoke in an exaggerated tone, showing the picture to Alex as she continued, "Look at little Alex. Isn't he sweet? That boyish charm smile on his face."

"Okay," Alex murmured.

"Oh come on, I'm joking. So I'm not supposed to make fun of you? It's only a one-way thing? Is that how this works?"

"Yeah, pretty much. You're _emasculating _me."

"_Emasculating you?"_ Elle laughed. "Really ... okay." She looked down at the picture, pretending that she was about to hand it back, then spoke, "Actually, I don't really have any pictures of you. Would it be cool if I kept this?"

"Uh ..."

"Or would you just be completely weirded out by that?"

"No, if you want it, it's all yours."

"Sweet," Elle smiled. "Tell you what, I'll make you a trade." She reached into her tiny leather backpack and pulled out one her own photos, placing it on the inside of Alex's locker door.

"I'll give you one of mine and stick it _right here_ – that way, every day, you can be reminded of how _awesome_ your life is to have someone like me in it."

"That's just what I was thinking. Exactly what I needed."

"_Exactly _what you needed, totally agree." Elle's giddiness caused her body to sway as she seemed to wind down towards a goodbye, giving Alex a chance to throw in any final words, then spoke, "Well, I'll leave you alone now."

"Picked up the hints, did ya?"

"Yeah," Elle laughed, "Took me a while. You know – _blond_."

"See you later."

Elle walked away, mouthing "bye" as she stepped into the herd of students passing through the hallway. Alex watched her go, and their eyes made contact one last time when she looked back towards him, smiling and brushing her hair behind her ear before submerging into the crowd.

His eyes wandered towards her picture and he pulled it off his locker door, staring at it with deep concentration as he tried to burn every intricate detail of her image into his memory.

The picture degraded into a sepia tone as Alex returned to the present. He continued to look at it, his pleasure turning to pain as he thought of Elle. He slid the photo in his pocket, determined to return to her, when he was suddenly startled by a metallic screech. His eyes jumped up and spotted a figure two levels above him. Tiny fingers were dangling through the holes in the metal grating, and his eyes met with those of a child. Those eyes belonged to Josh.


	14. The Last Memento

**— The Last Memento —**

_Author's Note__: one more thing. When I started this whole story, I really only had it planned out to the point Alex locks Elle in the jail cell, with only a vague notion of where the whole story was leading. Now that I do have the whole story thought out, I need to retract a former statement that the Order has no role in the story. While they don't make any actual appearance and the story is still mostly about Alex, the Order's beliefs will play some part in what's going on._

* * *

No one could really agree on what it was. I don't even remember the whole thing, just what led up to it. Most say it was an IED, some a grenade tossed from a window, and a few claim they saw an RPG flying from a rooftop.

Joey had only been dead for a little over a month. I started babying my team, doing a lot of risky things myself. We were doing satellite patrols through a town and my fire team was going down a street by ourselves. It seems so obvious looking back, but at the time, I figured the razor wire strewn across the road had just been left behind by a Vehicle Check Point.

I went up to it by myself and tried to clear it out, but then I got knocked down. Looking at my SAPI plates, it seems like a sniper who knew what he was doing was aiming for the side of my flak jacket, the part without any Kevlar. But, apparently I turned at just the right second and the bullet hit the edge of my back plate. Or maybe he got the windage wrong.

I fell into the wire and got caught. Once I realized I'd been shot at, I panicked and just got even more tangled. But I really don't remember being scared, just embarrassed. And that's as far as it goes. Beyond that, I just have to take someone else's word for it.

They told me I was "lucky". They said I probably ducked my head down before the blast and my Kevlar helmet protected me. And, of course, I instinctively shielded myself with my left arm, which took the brunt of the shrapnel. It got chewed up so bad they didn't even consider salvaging it.

And I didn't even find out about it until three days later. I was last to hear what happened to me.

— — — — —

"Josh! Don't move, just wait there!" Alex's foot propelled him forward into a sprint as he ran up the spiraling path ascending the infinite metal tower. His bag bounced violently behind him, swaying out of rhythm with his running and slamming against the back of his thighs as though trying to sabotage his progress.

When he came to the next level, he glanced up to see Josh moving further up the tower.

"_God damn it Josh! Stop!"_ He also saw who was walking ahead of Josh, dragging that great knife behind him like a tail. The blade grated against the metal floor, kicking up a swarm of sparks and a sharp metallic howl that sounded like the cry of a deformed animal. This didn't stop Alex, but rather stirred his legs to move faster.

As he rounded the turn to the next level, coming up behind Josh and the Bogeyman, Alex dropped his bag and readied his handgun, trying to remember how many shots were left in the magazine.

When Josh came into view, he suddenly stopped, his steps stuttering as they drastically wound down his pace to zero. His lungs finally caught up to him and he gasped for air, hunching over while keeping eye contact with Josh.

Josh stood there, squeezing his Robbie the Rabbit doll timidly as it dripped with blood and larvae.

"Josh," he spoke between breaths, "Come on. Come with me."

Josh just shook his head, backing away cautiously.

"Damn it Josh – I'm Alex, your brother."

His radio started to squeal with feedback and Alex looked past Josh towards the Bogeyman, who was turning around. His massive helmet swallowed the drab light to the point that he almost looked like a living shadow. Alex glanced at the great knife and realized that this space was far too narrow and confining for him to swing that heavy blade.

"Josh, we don't have time for this. Just come with me, _please."_ Alex started to step towards Josh, his approach causing his brother to quickly turn around and run towards the Bogeyman. But Alex quickly caught up with him and hooked his arm around Josh, lifting him off the ground as he kicked and screamed like a feral cub.

With Josh flailing and crying in his arm, Alex ran away from the Bogeyman, forgetting the chain that bound the man to his brother. The chain quickly tensed into a bridge between the two and Josh yelped as his arm snapped out straight behind them. Alex's legs kept moving as his top half was brought to a sudden halt and he slipped, falling onto his back against the metal grating. His firearm dropped from his grip and started sliding down the path, but he stamped it between the floor and the sole of his boot as Josh squirmed out of his grasp.

Josh clambered to his feet and rushed towards the Bogeyman, but Alex grabbed his ankle, his body stretched out awkwardly between his brother and his weapon.

"_What the hell is wrong with you?"_ he screamed as Josh tried to shake off his grasp, stomping his other foot on Alex's fingers. Alex looked up towards the Bogeyman, who was pulling his long blade towards him with the sounds of corroded, rusty gears as it scraped against the floor.

As a surge of anger and impatience flooded up through his blood, Alex suddenly pulled hard on Josh's leg, ripping his footing out from under him and sending Josh face first into the metal grating, howling with pain and distress.

While Josh laid dazed on the floor, Alex let him go and used his foot to slide his handgun up towards him, grasping it with his fingers. He crawled up to Josh and hooked his leg in front of him, pulling Josh back until the chain around his wrist tightened and he couldn't move.

He held his prosthetic out before him and rested his hand on it for a steadier aim, pulled back the hammer of his handgun for a hair trigger, and aimed just below the tip of the Bogeyman's helmet. The barrel belched a flash of fire and he heard a muffled metallic ting beneath the lingering explosion of gunfire in his ears. The shot ricocheted off the Bogeyman's helmet, hit the wall, and whizzed just past Alex's head, urging his neck to jump to his right.

The Bogeyman's arm was bent back with the handle of his large sword gripped in his hand. Alex steadied his aim, this time looking at the Bogeyman's leg through his gun sites. Just as he pulled the trigger and the muzzle flash consumed his sight like a ravenous fire, the Bogeyman launched his arm forward, thrusting the blade of the great knife towards Alex.

As that blade suddenly materialized through the cloud of flash blindness floating before Alex's eyes, he jerked to his left and rolled onto the ground. He didn't even realize the sword has slit through the skin at the top of his head until the blood began flowing down into his eye.

Josh squirmed to his feet and quickly fled from Alex, slipping past the Bogeyman and hiding behind him like a cub seeking shelter behind its mother.

As the haze of the muzzle flash subsided from his view, Alex noticed the Bogeyman's great sword was lodged into the metal wall, stuck. While the man tugged at it, trying to free his blade, Alex looked over the narrow space between the walls and the size of the Bogeyman's blade, realizing that blade was far too large for the man to position it in front of him.

Alex had to get in front of the Bogeyman.

With the grunt of the man echoing within his helmet at every brutal pull upon the handle of his sword, Alex sprinted forward with his head hunched down, aiming for the space between the Bogeyman and the wall. But as he was about to dive between them, the Bogeyman suddenly grasped his neck with his free hand and lifted Alex off the ground. A gasp of surprise leaving his lungs was suddenly cut short as his throat was squeezed shut.

Alex's legs swung in a panic, planting his feet on top of the Bogeyman's helmet and trying to push away from his grasp, but the man's grip was deceptively strong. He instinctively clawed at the man's hand with his left arm, his instincts not aware that it was only a prosthetic, and then reached with his right arm, almost unconsciously dropping his weapon so his fingers would be free to pry the Bogeyman's grip from around his neck.

But he managed to keep control and pressed the barrel of the gun against the Bogeyman's wrist instead, then pulled the trigger.

A flash of heat from the gunshot singed Alex's flesh and a spray of blood doused his face, but the Bogeyman's strength didn't waiver. Alex then reached down towards the jutting metal beak of the man's helmet, but the barrel of his handgun just barely scratched the tip.

Alex hooked his feet under the tip of the helmet and started pulling his body downwards. The Bogeyman was strong, but Alex found it had its limits when the man's arm started to tilt down under the pull of Alex's legs.

He finally managed to poke the barrel under the lip of the helmet and turned it upwards, aiming within that metal triangular dome. He desperately pulled the trigger three times until the gun was empty.

Intense flashes of light shot out from the bottom of the man's helmet like a cannon, the heat and force of those gunshots bouncing off the walls and blistering Alex's hand until he finally dropped the weapon and pulled his hand away from the pain.

The Bogeyman's moans echoed from within his helmet and he threw Alex down the twisting metal path. Alex slid across the metal grating and managed to stop himself just as the Bogeyman dislodged his blade from the wall. He got up on his feet while the man pulled his arm back, then shot it forward and released the handle of the blade, shooting it out towards Alex like a spear.

Alex ducked to his right, dodging the huge metal projectile, but suddenly felt his body being pulled back and he was thrown backwards until the great knife wedged into the wall with a fury of sparks and squeals. Alex tried to move, but something was holding his left arm back, and when he turned around, he found the blade had pierced his prosthetic and pinned him to the wall.

He watched helplessly as Josh walked away, ascending the corkscrewing path up the tower at the Bogeyman's side, tugging and pulling at his pinned arm as he screamed out his brother's name.

He pleaded for Josh to stop, but Josh continued upwards until Alex could no longer make out their silhouettes above him. He turned towards his left arm and chewed through the sleeve of his jacket like a desperate coyote as his right hand reached for his knife.

He unsheathed the knife and cut through the fabric of his jacket sleeve until he exposed the leather straps keeping his prosthetic arm bound to his flesh. He sawed and cut through those buckles until he was finally free from that plastic limb and tore his left sleeve in half when he pulled himself away.

Alex started to ascend the path up the tower, but suddenly stopped and backtracked until he reached his duffel and retrieved his handgun. He grabbed the box of spare ammunition from the bag and dumped it in his jacket pocket, then gripped the bolt cutters and ran up the tower in pursuit of Josh.

He wasn't sure how long he ran. The intensity of his determination and the adrenaline pumping through his muscles almost made is seem as though he'd become unstuck in time, flashing forward randomly. And then he discovered that the tower wasn't infinite when he reached its peak.

The air on the roof was cold and Alex watched the steam of his worn lungs rise from his lips. His heart wound down to a calm beat and he started to become aware of the exhaustion and pain running through his body.

There was nothing at the top of that metal tower. It was surrounded by darkness, rising up into nothing. He screamed Josh's name, but his voice was quickly consumed by the dark nothingness around him.

He suddenly felt weak and hunched over, noticing a door built into the floor over the metal cylinder running throughout the center of the tower. Darkness was painted across the glass of the viewing window. Alex had a sudden urge to get away from that door, but his curiosity overwhelmed it. It seemed important, perhaps more important than any other door he could find in this tower.

After debating it amongst his thoughts and rousing his nerve, Alex reached down and grabbed the handle, then pulled the door open.

The heat was thick around him and forced his lungs to work for each breath. He pulled in the light inhales of air through his nose, taking in the intense stench of feces marinated in urine. His eyes looked downward to assist his fingers in buttoning his ACU trousers and re-buckling his belt. Before opening the door to the chemical toilet, Alex looked over some of the graffiti written across the walls in permanent marker, reading, "Ninja Fact # 227: Ninja don't use umbrellas, they dodge each drop of rain."

When he stepped outside, the glare of the sun bleached the world around him and he fumbled for his sunglasses. He met another soldier coming out of the toilet next to his, Specialist Gonzales, or "Gonzo" as they all referred to him.

Gonzales looked over the sweat dripping from Alex's pores, asking, "God damn. You jerking off in there?"

"You kidding? I'd have a heat stroke. They'd find me dead with my prick in my hand."

Gonzales just shrugged, pulling a pack of cigarettes from his pocket and smacking it against his palm, packing the tobacco.

"Worse ways to go," he said.

They walked away from the line of chemical toilets across a road towards their barracks, a garrisoned building of an Iraqi rail yard that was large enough to hold their whole company in one huge open room.

As they approached the entrance, Alex saw Joey walking out with rushed steps, not even acknowledging Alex.

"What's up man," Alex greeted, but Joey only glanced at him, his pupils sprouting red veins throughout his eyes.

"You alright?" Alex asked, but Joey ignored him, brushing past Alex's shoulder as he stepped towards the chemical toilets.

Alex watched him go, calling out, "Well fuck you too!"

As Joey disappeared into one of the toilets, Alex looked at Gonzales, who had lit a cigarette, and asked, "The fuck is his problem?"

"Don't know," Gonzales shrugged. "Been like that all morning. Maybe he got a Dear John letter."

"From a hooker? He doesn't have a girlfriend."

"Maybe that's the problem then. Probably just stepping out for some angry masturbation."

"_Angry masturbation,"_ Alex laughed. "I like that, it's very colorful. Really paints an image in my mind, thank you."

"Speaking of, some mother fuckers keep ripping pages out of my magazines."

"Don't look at me, I got a vivid imagination."

"Uh-huh. Had one with Vida Guerra. Not a single picture of her left in it. Asshole even ripped the one out of the table of contents."

They jerked their eyes back towards the line of toilets when they heard a sudden loud pop. Alex stared at the one Joey had entered as his mind interpreted the noise, then laughed.

He looked at Gonzales, pointing back at the toilet, and asked with a smile, "Did he just have an -N-D- in the shitter?"

Gonzales didn't smile or even make eye contact with Alex, his eyes fixed on the chemical toilet and responding grimly, "I don't know."

Alex's smile quickly sunk when he considered the alternative.

"Joey! You alright?" he called out, but there was no answer.

He continued to call out Joey's name as he approached the toilet. He knocked on the blue plastic door, but no one responded from inside. He tried to open it, but it was locked.

Alex pulled out a folding knife and used it to pry the clear plastic cover off the "OCCUPIED" sign. He then used the point of the blade to push the wheel reading "OCCUPIED" until it flipped to "VACANT" and the door unlocked.

When he opened the door, the brass casing of a 5.56 round rolled out. The image before Alex caused a flash of heat to run across his skin, the heat coming from within him.

He knew what he saw, but his mind detached itself from his eyes and descended into wilful ignorance. Joey's body was slumped into an awkward position, looking like a rag doll tossed carelessly into a toy chest. The top portion of the back of his skull had blossomed open into a vivid display of red, blood splattered across the walls of the chemical toilet with solid dark chunks. The sun squeezed through the bullet hole near the top of the toilet and glared in Alex's eye.

He mindlessly reached towards Joey as though he could wake him from a slumber. He pushed Joey's body up until he could see his face. One of his eyes was barely open, only the white of that eye visible through the slit in his eyelids. The other was empty, the blast of the gunshot blowing it right out of the socket. His left cheek was torn open, the flesh shredded like a sheet of paper after a pencil was forced through it.

Alex's eyes saw a sheet of crumpled paper sticking out of Joey's trouser pocket. He pulled it out and looked over it, but there was no explanation. The paper was mostly blank outside of a few words that had been scratched out at the top, a failed attempt at a suicide note.

The sun disappeared beneath a sea of dark nothingness and Alex felt his knees shaking until they finally buckled and landed on top of the metal grating at the peak of the tower.

His eyes locked on that blank sheet of paper as the focus of his mind was consumed by a torrent of anger, frustration, and helplessness swarming inside him. The storm within him was so overwhelmingly large that it couldn't find an exit. The excess gathered in pools at the bottom of his eyes until the paper in his hand was just a dim white blur.

He dropped the paper and dug his fingers into the holes of the metal grating, squeezing until he drew blood. He then brought his hand up into a fist and punched the ground with all the strength in his arm. A surge of intense pain flashed through his body, briefly overcoming the rage within him like a flash of lightning.

Alex struck down again and again until his hand was barely strong enough to even quiver from pain, then fell onto his back and screamed.


End file.
